


A Love I Never Had

by L1av, relenafanel



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: (related to Bucky's job), Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blood and Gore, Dark Steve Rogers, Detective Sam Wilson, Detective Steve Rogers, Frankenstein AU, Gunshot Wounds, M/M, Medical Examiner Bucky Barnes, Medical Experimentation, Mutual Pining, Mystery, Other: See Story Notes, Romance, Science Fiction, Serial Killers, Temporary Character Death, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 07:50:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 38,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11203608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/L1av/pseuds/L1av, https://archiveofourown.org/users/relenafanel/pseuds/relenafanel
Summary: Detective Steve Rogers is not a cop if he’s dead.A Modern Frankenstein AU;or, the Modern Prometheus





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know how to describe this fic: it has dark themes, but I'm not necessarily sure it can be called a dark!fic since ultimately it's about two people falling in love through a lot of angst and then banter.
> 
> Here are some things to watch for:  
> Steve dies in chapter 1 and is brought back to life in chapter 2.  
> Some inappropriate dark humour - jokes of necrophilia, but no actual necrophilia.  
> Body consent issues - as in, Bucky steals Steve’s body and does surgery/modifications on it  
> Violence and depictions of blood and gore - Bucky is a medical examiner, most is related to his job  
> idk minor cannibalism?  
> Bucky’s dad was a mentally abusive father, so mentions of various shades of parental dickery  
> I barely did research unless you count watching a lot of tv as research. Beware of the potential of wild inaccuracies.
> 
> THIS FIC is my contribution to the Captain America Reverse Big Bang, and is based off the artwork/prompt from [@buckmebxrnes-art.tumblr.com](http://buckmebxrnes-art.tumblr.com/). They were fantastic to work with and let me run wild with the idea.
> 
> Make sure to direct love and comments towards the artwork as well!

> "Whence, I often asked myself, did the principle of life proceed? It was a bold question, and one which has ever been considered as a mystery; yet with how many things are we upon the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries." -  _ Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus _ by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

 

**A Modern Frankenstein AU**

~~ (or: a relenafanel dark!fic / romance) ~~

 

* * *

 

 

Bucky hated the living, the dead spoke to him much more clearly. Their bodies told the stories of their lives in silence, bearing their secrets to his keen, observational eye without bias or extraneous filler.  Bucky could slice open a corpse and learn what a person had for dinner or how hard they were on their liver.  A body never lied - it might hide truths he didn’t have the equipment to see, but a body never looked him in the eye and told a falsehood without blinking, not like a living person would. It also didn’t try to brag about the success of its diet, or talk about the weather, or offer unsolicited advice, unlike the small talk a person might make. He appreciated those silences.

 

Bucky fucking hated small talk. Some days he was convinced that at least 30% of the reason he specialized in dead bodies was due to the fact that he didn’t have to listen to them express stupidity.  For the most part, their last expression of stupidity had been  _ in dying _ .

 

The other 70%? That was dedicated to Bucky’s interest in finding ways to make death non-permanent - not in the pursuit of longevity or eternal life, but in the pursuit of science and medical discovery.  Being a medical examiner gave him access to all the body parts he needed to experiment with reanimation.

 

If he ever succeeded maybe he’d just have to stitch his creation’s mouth closed so it didn’t speak to him.  It was looking more and more like Bucky would never succeed. Even though he’d managed to restart the heart and reanimate limbs, so far they’d also been completely brain-dead, a twitching shell of a human being without the capacity to even breathe on their own.  It was hard to tell if the body was working when the natural CPU had turned to mush in the time the body was on ice in the morgue’s fridge.  

 

He’d have to consider bringing in a computer programmer if it persisted, and that would be a fun explanation.  

 

He’d get there.

 

And if he did, it seemed inhumane to consider silencing his work just so he could continue to have silence in his lab.  He didn’t hate small talk so much that he’d force silence on his creation, he could just deal with it a little less at work.

 

The worst of it came from the uniforms at the crime scenes Bucky was called into.  They didn’t know how to speak to him and felt uneasy around death, like forcing Bucky to baby them through seeing a corpse through making conversation about the Yankees was the best way to expedite the situation.

 

Idiots.

 

Firstly: the Yankees!!

 

Secondly: they should be used to it by now.

 

He was on his knees in front of a body, a few hours old with more blood spilled on the asphalt than left in the corpse and starting to smell for it in the sweltering mid-summer heat.  He noted the way the blood pooled in his notes, bending further to chase an elusive scent mingling with the blood and feces and the garbage from the nearby dumpster.  He ended up with his nose hovering close to the corpse’s groin, debating whether he was scenting perfume or some kind of rot.  Both had very distinctive scents, and this one hovered between the two.

 

“So it’s true you fuck the corpses, Barnes?” one of the uniforms on duty asked, posturing to show off his big-guy wit at watching Bucky’s process.  Someone else snickered, but for a crowd of seven cops the joke wasn’t well-received.  

 

That was what happened when the corpse used to be a city commissioner.  A bunch of cops got uneasy and started hovering in Bucky’s space while wringing their hands and cracking morbid jokes.

 

Bucky rolled his eyes.  “Yeah, I fucked your mom’s last night.”

 

The officer frowned in confusion, which was really indicative of the state of law enforcement these days. “My mom ain’t dead.”

 

“My mistake,” Bucky said in a bored and dismissive tone, his smile sharp as he gestured for one of the attendants to hand him a swab.  

 

One of the detectives on the scene snorted and Bucky spared a glance over to find a blond man beaming at him like Bucky had said something clever and had also taken someone down a peg, and that deserved a friendly level of affinity. The smile was welcoming and open and bright, and Bucky felt the corners of his own mouth turn up in response.  It gave him pause, because Bucky rarely responded positively to people. 

 

It stuck in his mind, and it shouldn’t have, because Bucky wouldn't label anything about this situation as a positive interaction. 

 

But it did.  It was still on his mind as he prepared the body for autopsy and looked at the notes in the postmortem paperwork to find the detectives attached to the case.

 

Sam Wilson.

Steve Rogers.

 

There was no hint as to which the blond man was, but Bucky’s eyebrows quirked up when he noted they were both part of vice.

 

So that was why he’d never encountered them before.  The medical examiner rarely had a reason to meet divisions that weren’t homicide.

 

x.x.x.

 

Bucky had a habit of ignoring police officers for a few moments after they came into his space unannounced as though they were entitled to just walk in and have him bend over backwards to accommodate their requests.  He didn’t look up as someone entered the morgue, walking like a cop and wearing his badge so it reflected off the bright overhead lights from the corner of his eye.  

 

He stood across from Bucky, watching his process as Bucky made the last few cuts to extract the intestines.  Bucky made sure not to look up as he was working, and unlike the majority of detectives who came into the morgue, this one didn’t launch right into demands while Bucky had a scalpel in his hand.

 

Smart man.

 

Finally, Bucky looked up to meet the gaze of the blond detective he’d made eye contact with at that crime scene a few weeks back.  “Oh,” he said with an uneasy sort of surprise for being urged into vocalizing any sort of surprise at all.  “Hello.”

 

“Detective Steve Rogers,” the man said, offering his hand.  “I’m here for Tyler Picoult.”

 

“Just a moment,” Bucky said, stripping off his bloody gloves and grabbing a fresh pair before heading over to one of the closed cold temperature chambers and opening it, bringing the body into view.  The cause of death was a bullet hole to the chest, and Bucky had extracted it and passed it into evidence.  There hadn’t been a need for a full autopsy, and it didn’t look like Tyler’s family was going to claim the body, so Bucky had already earmarked the corpse for his special project.

 

He’d have to rebuild the heart anyway.  Bucky was developing a hybrid model for circulation that used electrical impulses, not just to regulate the heart’s electrical conduction system, but to mimic  _ life _ .  

 

And he was close.

 

Rogers sighed when Tyler was revealed, closing his eyes for a moment.  

 

“I can get you a computer if you need to pull up the case file.” 

 

“This isn’t a case I’m working on,” Detective Rogers said, looking down at the body with tears in his eyes. Bucky would have noticed the emotional response without Rogers’ voice cracking in grief, but it was helpful to understand. “I volunteer with a mentorship program and a few years ago Tyler was my mentee until he aged out of the program. Aging out doesn’t mean that I would ever just drop him.  He was smart.  Too smart for this.”

 

“Sorry for your loss,” Bucky said, almost by rote, because he didn’t know what else to say to that.  The detective seemed to be a good person, and Bucky had more than enough familiarity with people who seemed to be a good person.  His own father was known as being a philanthropist and he didn’t have an altruistic bone in his body.

 

“I’d like to make arrangements to have him buried,” Detective Rogers said.  

 

All of Bucky’s plans for the corpse crashed around him.  No matter how well-meaning Rogers’s kindness was, burying his mentee would be a waste to the scientific community.  Bucky’s experiments could be a gift to mankind.  He might be working on immortality.  Any corpse lucky enough to land on the table in his lab could be contributing more in their death than they would be alive.

 

“I’ll grab the paperwork,” Bucky offered, leaving Steve standing over the body and heading to the file cabinet.  “You know,” he continued conversationally, while digging through the filing system.  He wasn’t the best at organization, but there were five other staff members who used the cabinet and they seemed to be worse than he was.  “You can absolutely pay out of pocket for him if you want, but in another few days the city is going to pay for him to be cremated and the ashes interred respectfully in a nice little cubby.  There’s visitation.  Personally, I’d prefer that to be my final resting place than a box in the ground or knowing that someone who cared for me spent more than they should on my burial.”

 

He looked up with the documents in hand to find Detective Rogers watching him with a frown on his face that told Bucky he’d managed to hook him.  Barneses had always been a charismatic, convincing lot, Bucky just didn’t use those skills the same way.  It made him more genuine, in his opinion.  

 

“I have the paperwork here.  It’s your choice.  I promise, if you leave Tyler with me, I’ll make sure special care goes into the process.”

 

Detective Rogers continued to look at the body of his friend, his mouth turning down at the corners.  He looked sad, and his grief was making him hesitate.  “It seems wrong to let him go unclaimed to the city.”

 

“I know,” Bucky answered, and he knew he had to tread very carefully.  Most people would have agreed with Bucky’s points immediately, making the offer more out of a sense of dutiful guilt than anything else.  He could tell that Steve’s mindset was similar, but there was also a passionate fire to it, a need to do what was right.  “But I promise.” His tone was sincere.  Detective Rogers paused with his hands on the paperwork Bucky handed him, looking at his face.  “I will personally take care of Tyler for you.  You have my word.”

 

“I…” he hesitated in response before nodding resolutely.  “I believe you.”

 

And that was the Barnes family charm.  It was their curse and their gift.

 

x.x.x.

 

In some ways Bucky was a normal guy.  He had a Netflix account and he sometimes shopped at Walmart. He’d willingly search for days for a pair of shoes that were: stylish, comfortable for standing for 8 hours at a time, and blood repellent.  He skipped meals and ate street meat while on the run between the morgue and a crime scene, and he sometimes came into work with bloodshot bleary eyes from an all-nighter. 

 

He had a dead guy in his basement.

 

If anyone looked at Bucky they might think the strangest thing about him was his fully articulated metal arm or his ability to walk into any murder scene without gagging at the scent, including bloated floaters and bodies found decomposing in dumpsters.  

 

They might think it was strange that Bucky didn’t do relationships.  

 

It was true, he didn’t do crushes.  It didn’t occur to him that there was more to life than his work and his scientific explorations.

 

He might have forgotten Brooklyn PD’s golden boy if that had been the only time he saw Steve Rogers.

 

But Steve Rogers stuck.

 

His growing crush on Steve Rogers might be the most normal thing about him.

 

x.x.x.

 

Bucky went home with Tyler’s body in the back seat of his car, navigating through the tight alley behind his property.  The house was shrouded in shadows, deep looming blackness from the surrounding apartment buildings dwarfing the gothic eves.  It was a remnant of a time when property lines in Brooklyn weren’t as tight as they were now, and a prevalent reminder of the Barnes family name.  When he left for work in the morning, the sun shining on the front was picturesque, giving the house the visage of a stately historical piece of architecture that made people stop on the sidewalk and stare.

 

At night, when Bucky returned home, the shadows showed it for what it was.

 

The house barely kept the dark secrets he had hidden in the basement.  Three stories made from old red brick the color of fresh blood and with gothic arched windows in a dark attic, it looked like the kind of house with a secret room beneath the wine cellar.  

 

The kind of room that meant his great grandfather couldn’t sell the house in a premium market.

 

There were bodies hidden beneath the floorboards; blood fertilizing the Barnes land for generations until it looked like it seeped up walls, creeping towards the roof.

 

The Barnes family: one of the original Brooklyn families.  An upstanding name denoting philanthropists dedicated to the community, donating their time and money to the betterment of their city.  Life-saving surgeons with the kind of skill that rarely came without hours of practice but seemed to come intuitively to them.  Barnes surgeons were responsible for some of the most important medical innovations to ever come out of America.

 

People had been disappearing in Brooklyn for centuries.  That was Bucky’s legacy.

 

The living didn’t interest Bucky.  There was no challenge to giving life to someone still alive.  It was much more skill-testing to give life to someone dead and who had been dead long enough for their brain activity to have completely stopped, long enough for their families and friends to miss them and claim their bodies.

 

Or to have the chance to.

 

Bucky didn’t take the living.  He only took the dead and the forgotten - the bodies the city paid to be incinerated so they didn’t take up space in the graveyards.  The unclaimed dead whose deaths weren’t suspicious enough to be considered murder.  The forgotten.  The lost.  The homeless and the elderly and the orphans of a big city where no one knew their neighbors and a quarter of the people were running from something and using the masses to disappear.

 

And they did disappear.

 

But they had disappeared before Bucky took them.  They’d disappeared long before they died.  That, too, was his legacy.  Bucky might not be the outward benefactor to Brooklyn that his family had used as a front for years while they kidnapped people in secret and experimented on them.  He gave back to his community by breaking the cycle, and none of them would ever know enough to be grateful for it.

 

x.x.x.

 

Bucky put in the final suture, closing up the internal wiring he’d painstakingly placed in Tyler’s corpse.  It was equally as much engineering as it was medicine, a modern marvel of complicated nerve grafts, hard-wiring, and bionics. Bucky had spliced wiring through his nervous system, designed to conduct electricity to power the body, utilizing parts that already existed.  The heart was wired with a rechargeable battery, and he’d solved the distribution and recharging problem by installing bolts in areas where conductivity broke down and the wiring got delicate and complicated.  It completely worked with and as an alternative to the body’s natural nerves.

 

In theory.

 

Theoretically, with enough charge, all that delicate wiring would completely power the body and brain, bringing Tyler back to life.  Bucky stood back and observed his creation, and for the first time before testing the final phases, he felt like a god.  Usually the people he picked to experiment on had no one in their lives, and so bringing them back from the dead only meant something to further Bucky’s scientific experimentation.

 

Tyler had Steve, and the knowledge of it reminded him for the first time in a long while that he was working on a real person.  He ruthlessly pushed down that feeling of power.  A bit of ego was ok, but his father had been verging on megalomania and it was something he deliberately tried to control him himself.

 

The body bucked as the powerful charge went through it.  He’d perfected the process enough that the scent of burnt hair and singed flesh in the room was very mild, even if the process itself was violent.  

 

“I give life,” he muttered sarcastically into his tape recorder as Tyler lurched forward, limbs twitching.  He then stepped up against the lab table and fell to the ground, limbs still moving in an approximation of walking. It looked like a fallen robot - the cheap kind built as children’s toys, and he sighed as he watched it happen.  “The problem seems to be in the brain interface.  I can reanimate limbs, but without a viable brain, medically I may as well just put them on a bypass machine.  At this point I hypothesize that it’s due to the decay in the brain. I need fresher bodies.”

 

And, a small voice in the back of his head reminded him that if he wanted to, all he had to do was take after his father and go find a fresher body.

 

The freshest of bodies.

 

Bucky could murder someone.

 

But, despite the option being available, Bucky had always promised himself that there was a line he refused to cross, and he’d never kill someone for his work.

 

He would rather never be successful than turn into A Barnes.

 

x.x.x.

 

Bucky had an affinity for strong coffee.  There was an old, cheap Mr. Coffee machine on top of the filing cabinet in his office that had been spitting out increasingly vile watery swill.  Bucky wasn’t sure where it came from.  He thought it might have been purchased by his predecessor in the 80s and he hadn’t thought much about it until it stopped working.  He’d spent the last hour piecing together an unfortunate murder victim who had a post-mortem run-in with a wood chipper in order to locate the cause of death, and his eyes were ready to cross from the effort.  

 

So of course Mr. Coffee gave him a mug of dirty water despite the amount of coffee grinds Bucky had fed it.  He choked down a mouthful before deciding  _ fuck it _ .  He didn’t hate people so much that he couldn’t stand to be among them for five minutes.  There was a hierarchy of priorities there.

 

Most  _ Offices of Chief Medical Examiner - Brooklyn _ locations were in hospitals, but Bucky had chosen to work from one of the smaller, older facilities serving the Bushwick to Crown Heights area.  It was the kind of place where the police station was on the same block as the morgue, one of those city holdovers from a different time, but certainly convenient for his co-workers.  They’d arrive thirty seconds late for their shifts with coffee and an anecdote about one of the police officers everyone knew, and Bucky would be expected to make small talk on his way out the door.

 

He’d always avoided the cafe situated between both buildings, despite the coffee, for exactly that reason.

 

But, when he stepped through the doors and stopped at the end of the line up, he realized there was a flaw in his avoiding-small-talk lifestyle as his gaze slipped past all the people in front of him and landed on someone familiar.

 

Detective Rogers was in front of him in line, retrieving his to-go cup.  He had his own travel mug, paying to have it filled, and there was something about that fact that had Bucky tucking the knowledge aside for later.  Rogers turned and spoke to the person beside him, a man Bucky was sure had been at the crime scene the first time Bucky had turned towards a sound and his eyes met Rogers’s.

 

Bucky watched as the two of them turned back towards the door, chatting animatedly as they went and passing Bucky on their way out.  For all that he hated small-talk, there was a small piece of Bucky that yearned for that.  Not in general, but from Steve.  He felt acutely alone in the world for a second, which surprised him enough that he didn’t know what to do with the feeling.

 

The door closed behind Steve, the glass still showcasing the way his dress pants hugged his ass, and Bucky realized his gaze had followed Steve out of the building.  Bucky didn’t want things, and he rarely sought out people, but there was something about the man that had drawn Bucky in quickly and lingered in the same way Bucky’s eyes did as they followed him across the room, an overt secret that anyone could see if they looked.  

 

People, even in a coffee shop full of cops, didn’t look.  They might see what was in front of them, but they didn’t observe.

 

Bucky was glad for the anonymity of it.  

 

x.x.x.

 

It got to be a habit.  Bucky would stand in the long line at the coffee shop that signified a shift change, cops being neither subtle nor very concerned about having obvious habits that were easily exploited when it came to getting a caffeine fix, and he’d watch Steve Rogers stand in front of him.  He observed the careful shift of weight from one leg to another, his right knee bothering him for about a week.  He saw the way Steve smiled at the barista, but didn’t overtly flirt even when she hinted towards giving him her number.

 

He observed Steve’s partner look at him on week two, his eyes narrowed in suspicion.  Bucky didn’t react.  Reacting would confirm that he was doing something, and Bucky had kept darker secrets all his life to be caught out because he had a crush.

 

And, really, the time he’d taken a second to put his hair up in a short ponytail after a surprise gust of wind had made it unruly and Steve walked into the cafe door hadn’t been his fault at all.

 

x.x.x.

 

It got worse every time Bucky saw Detective Rogers standing in front of him in line.  He’d perfected his timing and was beginning to learn Steve’s schedule so he was accurate in seeing him at least 3 times a week.  It made his heart beat quickly, his palms sweat, and that part of his brain that told him when he was being an idiot to sarcastically give him a thumbs up every time he let Steve walk past him without saying anything to him, or even really acknowledging him with anything other than a polite smile.

 

It all changed on a Monday when Steve turned in line and saw Bucky, giving him a smile and a small, dorky wave.  He then held up a finger like he was asking Bucky to wait for something, and turned to place his order.

 

Wait for what? Bucky subtly turned to look behind him to see if there was someone else Steve could be gesturing to, but there wasn’t.  Steve was definitely talking to him.

 

Be calm.

 

Be Calm.

 

BE CALM, Bucky told himself as Steve Rogers stepped away from the counter with his coffee and looked towards Bucky, a pleased gleam in his eye that told Bucky that something was about to happen.  Rogers deliberately walked towards him, confident and friendly, his body language open.

 

Bucky wasn’t calm, because that walk was  _ lethal _ .

 

“Detective Rogers,” Bucky said in a serene tone as Steve paused in front of him with his travel mug and a take-out cup of coffee.

 

“Steve,” he replied, and his first name wasn’t the only thing he was offering, the take-out cup extended in his hand towards Bucky.  He was smiling, openly, and Bucky knew enough about facial musculature to notice the way it reached his eyes. That was a cliche, wasn’t it?  But it made Bucky smile back. “I wanted to thank you for taking care of Tyler.”

 

“Bucky,” he offered, because Steve had, taking the coffee from him.  It was warm in his hand, and when his fingers brushed against Steve’s there was an illusion of heat from them as well.  Bucky didn’t feel like pulling back and away from him awkwardly, which was close enough to being the same thing.

 

Steve’s grin got wider.  “Thank you,” he said, and he subtly moved in a way that had Bucky following him so they weren’t blocking the line.  “I know you must not offer your name to very many people.  No one I asked seemed to know it, and I think if they did they couldn’t possibly be as terrified of you as they are.”

 

Bucky opened his mouth to take a sip of coffee but ended up gaping at Steve instead.  “What are you trying to say?”

 

“It’s a cute first name - or nickname? - Doctor Barnes.”  Then he leaned in, that flirtatious smile still on his lips.  It made Bucky’s heart beat a little faster, his mouth dry enough that he wanted to take a drink of coffee, but didn’t allow himself to move.  “Don’t worry, I’ll take your secret to my grave.”

 

“I…” Bucky started to say.  “It’s not a secret.”  But, as Steve had discerned almost immediately, he didn’t tell his preferred name to very many people.  “I just… they’re not my friends.”

 

Steve’s expression softened as he looked at Bucky and it made him realize exactly what he’d just implied.  “I’ll see you around, Bucky.”

 

“Sure,” Bucky replied, about as casual as he could get when his brain was screaming a combination of joy and fear at him.  Having a crush was exhausting.  “Thanks for the coffee!” he called out after him as an afterthought, and Steve turned back towards him to salute with his travel mug, catching the way Bucky was looking at his ass as he left.

 

It should have made Bucky feel more awkward and embarrassed, but it was hard to feel either of those things when he defied anyone not to watch Detective Steve Rogers walk away.

 

x.x.x.

 

 

“Another one for you, Doc,” Mannix, one of the morgue attendants said, wheeling in the gurney with the squeaky wheel.  It grated at Bucky every time he heard it, because no matter how many ‘oil me’ passive aggressive stickies he left on it, no one did.  He’d eventually get around to doing it himself, despite it not being even close to being part of his job description.

 

He was their supervisor, for fucksakes.  If none of them did it willingly, he’d write it into their job descriptions. 

 

“Put it in the hallway with the rest of the overflow,” Bucky said in an absent tone, removing particulates from the mass of sludge that used to be someone’s internal organs.  If he could give anyone advice while they were dying, it would be to  _ not liquify _ , thanks.

 

Mannix hesitated.  “Uh…” he said, “I can’t.  I was told to take special care of him.”

 

Bucky sighed in exasperation and turned.  “I am literally up to my elbows in viscera,” he said, holding his hands up in front of him to minimize what they touched.  For someone who handled bodies, Mannix sure couldn’t deal with seeing the result of them with the consistency of soup.  “There are four more bodies on my table today to get through in order to make space for whatever  _ very special person _ you have there, and I’m the only one here.”

 

Bucky’s sarcasm was biting, if the way Mannix paled was any indication.  “It’s one of the Detectives from…”

 

Christ.  Of course. Cops were overly sensitive when it was one of their own. If Bucky thought they made demands when it was a city commissioner, then it was triple-fold for another cop.  Bucky hated compromising and exceptions, but he knew how to play the game.  The game of not making a cop so pissed off that he started looking into Bucky’s life out of spite. “I’ll get to him the moment I’m done here.”

 

“But…”  

 

“We’ve turned the temperature down in the hallway.  Spending an hour covered with a sheet isn’t going to do him any harm.  Leave him.”  Bucky really meant LEAVE.  All caps.  Full stop.  He didn’t have time to hold someone’s hand, especially when they would have a violent reaction to all the people goop on his fingers.  He also didn’t have time to clean puke off his shoes.

 

“You need to sign,” Mannix reminded him, holding up the clipboard.

 

“Do you want to help me take these gloves off so I can pick up a pen?”

 

“I’ll leave the paperwork with him, then?” Mannix asked, and it was the first smart question he’d had all morning.

 

It was very much interoffice politics that had Bucky removing one of the bodies from the drawer it was temporarily interred in to make room for the dead police officer, and it annoyed him to do so.  Everyone in his morgue had the same status, from the unnamed and unclaimed, to the fancy socialite with the crystal high heels he’d had to cut off.  The statuses that took priority for him were the open case murders, especially the ones part of a larger context of crimes.  

 

Despite all his grumbling and lack of people skills, Bucky was very good at his job.

 

But it was important, especially when keeping a secret the magnitude of all of Bucky’s, not to piss off the cops.

 

He paused for a second and realized that he’d have to be very careful if he decided to start a relationship with Steve Rogers.  The door to his home lab was hidden in his basement, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t also have to think about the possibility of Steve stopping by unannounced while Bucky was dragging a body from his car.  That would be awkward to explain.

 

Mannix hadn’t bothered to take the body out of the body bag, despite Bucky’s clear hint towards an instruction to remove it and put a sheet over it.  He rolled his eyes and tried to remember if Mannix was the one trying to work his way through med school or if he just thought a job in a morgue was edgy and cool.

 

“Ok,” Bucky muttered to himself as he pulled on a fresh pair of gloves.  There was no one around to hear him, so he followed it up with, “who am I derailing my whole day for this time?” The clipboard was on top of the body and he grabbed it, almost aggressive in his annoyance.  

 

“Rogers,” Bucky read, saying the words out loud before his brain caught up with their meaning, “-Steve.”  

 

The first name was said quieter as it hit him whose post-mortem paperwork he was holding.  His hands shook as he dropped the clipboard back on the gurney at the corpse’s feet, not able to think of it as Steve until he made sure.  His fingers were numb as Bucky stepped forward and fumbled as he tried to draw the body bag zipper down, revealing Steve’s golden blond hair first.

 

Then dirt and blood smeared on his forehead.

 

And his painfully familiar face.

 

“Oh,” Bucky whispered in a tiny voice, reaching out and tenderly dislodging dirt from Steve’s hair with no thought to proper procedure.  Steve didn’t react, the skin of his face cooler than Bucky’s hand, even through the glove.  “ _ Steve _ .”  

 

He remembered Steve handing him coffee, a shy yet comfortable smile on his face.

 

He remembered Steve worrying about a street kid he’d mentored years before, willing to pay for burial costs.

 

He remembered Steve’s grateful smile and trust when Bucky promised to take care of Tyler.

 

He remembered the sun in Steve’s hair, the snort at Bucky’s caustic sarcasm the first time their eyes met.  He thought about how he felt around Steve, alive and vibrant.  Hopeful.

 

He remembered Steve’s enigmatic grin the last time they spoke as he leaned in and told Bucky he’s take his nickname to his grave .

 

....Steve had.  Steve was dead, and his body was in front of Bucky, and he wouldn’t ever get the chance to say Bucky’s name again. 

 

He’d never hear Bucky use his first name.

 

_ Oh. _

 

Steve was **dead** , and it felt like the walls of the hallway were closing in on him.  He couldn’t breathe, very much aware of his own heartbeat sounding through his body as his gaze narrowed on Steve’s face.  He was paralyzed, unable to move, harsh breath echoing in the corridor as he flexed his hands in and out of a fist, a chill running up his spine as it felt like the warmth was draining out of his body.

 

Bucky inhaled, a gasp, ragged and raw.  He was crying, his tears falling on the black body bag and running down the surface until they disappeared.

 

He watched Steve’s face.  Bucky didn’t expect signs of life, but he still couldn’t take his eyes away from it as the tears ran down his cheeks and he tried, desperately, to stop crying.

 

He wept for Steve and the loss of that warm, golden smile, and he wept for himself.

 

He tried to catch his breath, the sound overwhelmed by the rest of Bucky’s physical responses.  Bucky’s fingers locked around Steve’s shoulders as he rode out the last of the intense emotional reaction.  His breathing steadied. He wondered if there was any coming back from this moment as he stared at Steve’s face, serene and placid, devoid of life, and thought  _ Oh _ . So that was what it felt like to be overwhelmed by gratitude.

 

He’d mastered reanimation.

 

And now Steve could be his.

 

Forever.


	2. Chapter 2

Stealing bodies from the morgue wasn’t as difficult as one would assume.  Despite the building being close to the police station, the staff parking lot was in a key-card secured area with very little other security.  It made taking the bodies earmarked for cremation easy.  Bucky knew the schedules of everyone working in the building, and he knew the best parking spots.  He knew how to avoid the cameras in the morgue, which ones were only for show, and he knew how to hide a body in his car so the cameras on the outside of the gate wouldn’t pick up on his extra passenger. 

 

And, in the end, the bodies he took had no one looking for them.

 

Detective Steve Rogers was a whole other matter.  Bucky had never entertained the idea of removing a fresh corpse from a secure facility before, especially one that had been a cop. There was no way to get away with it except to do it and hope that because Steve’s paperwork had never been processed that a few days would pass before someone noticed he was missing.

 

Detective Rogers seemed to be well-liked so the chances of that happening were minimal. Bucky knew that he was facing an inquiry about where Steve’s body went, and possibly dismissal if he was found negligent. His every movement would be under a microscope, and the best resource he had was plausible deniability.  

 

He didn’t care.  At all.

 

Bucky had Steve loaded into his car and was out of the lot before he did more than consider the consequences of his actions.  He couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

 

He knew he had hours of work ahead of him, and if his theory was right, a very narrow timeline to complete it in.  There wasn’t time to be concerned about what might happen.

 

x.x.x.

 

Bucky turned the electricity off.  He could still feel the charge in the air, a palpable sense of his hair standing on end, and he wondered if it was lingering power or his own anticipation.  Most of Steve’s body had stopped twitching, a residual movement of one of the fingers on his right hand the only sign that he’d had electricity running through him for the last thirty minutes, and Bucky held his breath because this was the make or break moment.

 

Steve exhaled.  A death rattle that raised the hairs on Bucky’s arms, reverberating through the silent room.  He felt a tingling at the base of his neck, and he wasn’t sure it was from the electricity on the air or his own confidence in his skills.

 

Then Steve gasped, inhaling air like the living as he continued to  _ breathe _ .

 

He watched Steve closely, waiting, anticipating.  He’d done everything right, performed each step to the apex of his skills and knowledge, but what if he hadn’t been ready?  What if he’d needed one more test subject to work out some unknown kink and Steve’s corpse would just be another sacrifice for science?  It had never mattered to Bucky whether he was successful or not, not while learning from his mistakes and moving forward.

 

Steve mattered.  Nothing would ever matter as much as Steve Rogers and this moment did.

 

Steve’s finger twitched again, and Bucky tilted his head as his attention moved to Steve’s hand.  A few seconds of movement was typical after an application of electricity, but after a minute it usually tapered off - not always, he’d had some early false moments of promise in his experimentation by thinking those twitches were signs of life, but on Steve is was something to consider.

 

He looked back up at Steve’s face.

 

Steve’s eyes were open and staring at him.

 

“Steve?” Bucky said, moving forward quickly and grabbing his medical penlight from the waiting tray, shining it into Steve’s eyes to see if his pupils reacted. 

 

The reaction was barely there, and Steve’s eyes remained open and staring forward, not reacting to Bucky’s presence.  

 

It might take time, Bucky reminded himself as his heart sank.  He tried the penlight again, to the same reaction.  It wouldn’t be smart to open Steve up immediately to make sure everything was connected properly, not when his eyes were open and his finger was still twitching.  Bucky was definitely being too impatient in a way he’d never experienced before. He was so, so close.

 

And it was Steve, the man he had absolutely no chill with as he approached in a coffee shop.  Of course Bucky was going to be impatient for the procedure to work.

 

Bucky took a step back, and moved towards his desk so he could write down all of his observations, sitting there with his feet up as he simply watched Steve.  God, he was beautiful. Possibly this would be the last time Bucky saw him. It seemed cruel to consider keeping Steve if Bucky couldn’t make his reanimation work, like a sad wind-up doll he kept in the freezer hoping to repair someday.

 

(Bucky wasn't sure what his decision on that one was yet.)

 

**New text from Becca:**

Tampon good for nosebloods or myth?

 

**Bucky:**

They’re fine. Sterile. You might need to trim it if your nostril is too small.

 

**Becca:**

Thx Dr. Bucky. Google answers tols me to shove a maxipad up there while I was at it smh assholes.

 

Bucky laughed and shook his head.  At least there was one normal member of his family.  The Barnes antisocial behavior had skipped over her, unless she was secretly a serial killer and he had no idea.  Brooklyn didn’t seem to have one of those at the moment, as far as he could tell.  It took his mind off his failure with Steve for a second, and the crushing disappointment he felt at the idea that for all of his science and all of his successes, he hadn’t gotten far enough to save the man who smirked at him over Bucky’s nickname.

 

His eyes went back to Steve and he almost dropped his phone in surprise to find Steve’s eyes had tracked to the left and he was now staring right at Bucky.

 

Oh, fuck! OK!

 

Bucky hurried over and checked with the penlight again, noticing that he had a little more of a response this time, one that could justify the idea of there being some sort of brain activity going on behind those eyes.  He clicked the light off and looked at Steve.  “You were in an accident.  Can you hear me?  Blink once if you can understand me.”

 

Nothing.

 

He was getting better, though.  Bucky felt a little more confident about continuing to wait.  “Ok,” he said to Steve.  Even if Steve wasn't aware, he might find comfort in hearing his voice, any voice.  He could feel the solid beat of Steve’s heart, aided by the battery Bucky had installed.  He could sense Steve breathing.  Steve’s finger was still twitching occasionally like there was something going on in his brain, but it was too overwhelmed to do much.  

 

Bucky stood there looking at Steve. Steve looked back, but only because Bucky had put himself into Steve’s line of sight.  It was unnerving, and he wondered if he had eye drops around so Steve’s eyes didn’t get too dry.  Probably upstairs in his medicine cabinet, but he didn’t want to leave Steve’s field of vision.  He couldn’t imagine waking up alone in a lab with the kind of body alterations Bucky had made to make the reanimation work.

 

For the first time he felt a little uneasy about the possibility that he’d been successful.  He hadn’t exactly gotten permission for any of it, and Steve seemed like someone who wouldn’t forgive that kind of oversight.

 

He moved his hand away from where he’d rested it against Steve’s cheek as he checked for a reaction, and Steve’s head followed, seeking out Bucky’s touch.  For a second he thought that was a stupid way to view the movement when it made more sense for Bucky to have been holding Steve’s head up unintentionally.  Then Steve straightened his head on his own.

 

Autonomic responses were fine.  Steve didn’t seem to be aware of his surroundings, but he was showing signs that he might be able to eventually.

 

Bucky pulled the chair out from behind his desk and sat in front of Steve, watching him.  At first he couldn’t detect any changes or anomalies, but the longer he sat there the less placid Steve’s body became.  Slowly, he tensed, his fingers moving from a twitch into closed fist as the muscles in his arms clenched and his face moved into a wince.

 

Finally Steve blinked, three times in rapid succession.  He looked at Bucky and opened his mouth.

 

Nothing came out but a croaking sound, but it was one of the most beautiful sounds Bucky had ever heard, especially when Steve cleared his throat to try again.

 

“Buuu…” he managed, breaking off and wincing, and Bucky reassessed.  That was the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard.

 

Because Steve was aware.  Steve was aware of who he was, who Bucky was, and he knew that what he was saying wasn’t coming out right.  “It’s ok.  It’s ok.”  Bucky promised, standing so he could lean in.  “Can you nod for me?”

 

Steve nodded.

 

“Do you know who I am?” 

 

Nod.

 

“Do you know who you are?”

 

Nod.

 

“I’ll get you some water,” Bucky said, patting Steve’s arm and moving to find him something to drink.  Water might help Steve a little, but what he really needed was a few more minutes to recover.  It was a mistake for Bucky to move.  He’d barely gotten his mini fridge open when Steve made a choked sound of dismay and Bucky turned to find him looking down at his hands, eyes wide with terror.

 

It wasn’t his hands he was looking at.  It was the bolts Bucky had screwed into his wrist and the long, jagged gash on the back of his hand that Bucky had stitched up, the line of it harsh against his pale skin.  He was breathing heavily by the time Bucky got back to him, twisting off the cap of the bottle of water and holding it out to Steve.

 

Steve just stared at him, frightened but trusting.  “Am I… dead?” he asked.

 

“Yes,” Bucky answered simply.  "You were."


	3. Chapter 3

Bucky closed his bedroom door, leaning back against it with such relief that his head banged against the wood.  He breathed out with a gusty sigh and then inhaled sharply, continuing to breath as he felt the last of the adrenaline ebb out of his system.  He was exhausted by everything that happened in the last 36 hours.  Steve’s death.  Stealing his body.  The quick emergency operation. The success of Steve waking up.

 

Steve’s reaction.

 

Bucky felt like he could sleep for another 36 hours but there were less than 4 hours left before he had to be awake and at work.  He’d done all nighters before, where he got so lost in his work that he’d been jarred out of it by the wake-up alarm on his phone.  He was almost used to them.

 

But this was different.  It had an emotional toll that he wasn’t sure he could nap off.  The euphoria was edging off, and he ended up laughing out loud in his empty room, unable to stop until he was braced with one hand on a chair and the other clutched at his middle.  It was a hollow laugh, hysterical and harsh. It took the last of his energy with it and Bucky stumbled over to his bed, falling face-first and landing on top of his mess of sheets.  For the second time this week there were tears on his cheeks.  That, too, would be draining.

 

He didn’t sleep immediately.  He kept thinking about the way Steve’s countenance had gone from trusting to disbelief to disgust and distrust.  Without riding the high of his success, he could see everything he’d have to face in the coming days.

 

He fell asleep wondering if he’d made a huge mistake.

 

x.x.x.

 

Bucky was the middle of staring half-asleep at his Keurig as it streamed coffee into his travel mug, blinking blearily and eating a slice of bread he hadn’t bothered toasting because it would have taken too much effort, when Steve entered the kitchen.  His steps were undeliberately heavy, his body still adjusting to movement, but Steve had a certain presence that made it so Bucky would have noticed him anyway, no matter how fuzzy his mind was.  There was a keen awareness of Steve, something that had been there before and had nothing to do with Steve being his success story.

 

It was impossible to look at Steve frowning at him and claim _'creation.'_    Bucky had created the technique, not the man.

 

“Am I trapped here?” he demanded, causing Bucky to choke on the dry bread.  Bucky turned slowly, taking in the way Steve had his arms crossed in front of his chest.  He looked confrontational, like he would storm out that door in a moment, even though he was still learning how his body worked.

 

Bucky couldn’t even blame him.  He blinked at Steve.  Christ, he really should have thought this through in practical terms.  “No,” he said, but it came out sounding more like a question.  “I mean, I wouldn’t recommend you walk out the door  _ today _ .  But you can.  If you want to.”

 

The idea put him into a panic, but it was better that he feel panicked and trapped and terrified than Steve did.

 

Bucky wasn’t a  _ monster _ .

 

Steve nodded once.  His mouth turned up with a bitter sense of rue.  “I suppose I can’t go back to living my normal life.”

 

“Well considering I stole you from the morgue that might be difficult.” He meant it to be truthful, but it came out as caustic sarcasm due to the 2 hours of sleep he’d managed in the last 2 days.  He followed it up with a shrug as though that would soften the blow.

 

Steve nodded again, like that confirmed something he suspected.  “So there’s paperwork filed about my death but no body?” he said, cutting right to the crux of Bucky’s main fear.  “That’s going to look suspicious.”

 

Bucky observed him for a moment.  The Keurig had stopped spitting out coffee and he should have left for work five minutes ago, but he owed Steve not to rush this conversation.  “Of course it will.  But it was  _ you. _ ”

 

That little line appeared between Steve’s eyebrows.  Bucky didn’t know Steve well enough yet, but he’d seen that expression when Steve was deep in thought.

 

“I didn’t think it through.  Is that what you want to hear?  I opened the body bag and saw you lying there. You’d just bought me a coffee and made fun of my nickname the day before, and then you were in my morgue.  I have the skill to bring the dead back to life.  How could I… not try?”

 

There was a stubborn, mulish tilt to Steve’s jaw.  “It wasn’t your decision to make.”

 

“Maybe not.  But I made it, for better or for worse.  So I’m going to go in today and face questions about your disappearance, and you can do whatever you want. If you need to leave, leave, but I suggest that you stay because there are certain things about your condition that I haven’t gone over yet, or that I might not even know until they happen.  It’s your choice.”

 

Steve looked at Bucky like he was the world’s biggest asshole, and he probably wasn’t even wrong.  Bucky headed out the door to work after leaving Steve his number for emergencies, vowing that the least he could do was pick Steve up some essentials like clothes and a cell phone.  He didn’t think it would make things easier for him in terms of Steve’s anger, but it would make things easier for Steve not to feel so cut off from the world.

 

The idea completely slipped his mind when he got to work to find out that his projection of it taking at least 24 hours to realize Rogers’s body was missing had been a conservative estimate and Detective Sam Wilson was not someone to piss off.

 

His partner’s body missing?  Definitely a piss off.

 

x.x.x.

 

“I find it suspicious that you took the day off right after his body went missing,” Wilson said, leaning aggressively across Bucky’s desk.  He'd cornered Bucky the moment he got in, definitely noticing that Bucky was closer to 10 minutes late by the time he got there. 

 

“I…” Bucky hesitated, looking down at his feet.  He wasn’t that interested in his shoelaces, but he learned how to fool someone with body language during his childhood.  “Steve died,” he mumbled, quickly looking up at Detective Wilson.  “I know it might seem strange to hear from a medical examiner, but one of the reasons I went into this field is because I don’t take death well when it’s personal, and Steve was…”  He didn’t think he could force himself to blush, but he gave a lopsided smile and a half shrug.  “He was… well, you know.”

 

Wilson was looking at him closely and he didn’t seem any less suspicious.  “I am going to get to the bottom of this.  Let’s go over it again.  Steve’s body came in…?”

 

“I told Mannix to leave him in the hallway with the overflow and…” Bucky inhaled and ran his fingers through his hair.  “I didn’t know it was him.  I knew it was a cop, but I didn’t know it was him.  I didn’t find out until I went to process the paperwork and read his name on the papers.  And I… left.  I called in someone to replace me and I sat in my car crying until they showed up.  I didn’t know he went missing.”

 

“Did you open the body bag?”

 

“Yeah.  I had to check.  That’s part of the reason I couldn’t face this place yesterday.  I opened the bag and I saw him.”

 

“It was Steve?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“And he was dead?”

 

“Yes,” Bucky replied with the slightest bit of impatience in his tone.  “Despite what you see on TV, bodies don’t just come back to life and walk away.”

 

Wilson gave him an unimpressed look at that, segueing into another question and then another that Bucky did his best to answer truthfully without even hinting at the fact that Rogers’s missing body was currently sitting in his family home and it was the most alive set of bones on the property. 

 

“Detective Wilson,” he finally said in a straightforward tone.  “I appreciate that Detective Rogers meant a lot to you and that the disappearance of his body from the morgue is a priority to you, but unless I’m being suspended, we’ve been over it three times and our conversation is cutting into my work day.”

 

“You know what they say about you in the bullpen?” Wilson asked, leaning back in his chair like he had the upper hand.

 

“That’s a low blow, Detective,” Bucky said, getting to his feet.  “And a juvenile rumor.  You were standing next to Steve during that conversation.”

 

“He thought you were funny.  I’m more suspicious by nature.”

 

“Be careful who you accuse of necrophilia,” Bucky said in a low tone, leaning back across the desk and looking directly into Wilson’s eyes.  “That day is a good memory for me.  I won’t do anything to block this case, for Steve’s sake, but piss off the medical examiner and you’re likely to find every case you work on put in a low priority pile.”

 

Wilson, damn him, looked incredibly unimpressed by Bucky’s threat, but Bucky wasn’t stupid enough to threaten a cop directly.  Even though he had Steve, he didn’t have Steve the way that the specter of possibility between them before Steve’s death had made it feel like he might.  The memory of Steve the first time he saw him was still precious because eventually he’d dragged that person down into the darkness of the lab beneath his basement.  Down with him.

 

“Barnes,” Wilson said, stopping Bucky from leaving the room.  He paused and looked back, feeling sympathetic for the lines of grief on Wilson’s face.  “He was… ‘well you know’ about you too.”

 

Bucky gave him a wan, unhappy smile.  He didn’t have to feign that reaction, because Steve’s feelings towards him were bittersweet.  Maybe, once, that crush could have developed into something, but Bucky had a feeling that Steve wasn’t a forgiving sort of person.  “Yeah,” he said, and his throat clicked as he swallowed around the sense of loss.  “Yeah.”

 

“I will figure this out.”

 

“I hope you do, Detective,” Bucky said, and it was an easy enough lie to tell.

 

x.x.x.

 

Bucky got home to find Steve sitting on the comfortable couch in the living room, reading a book he must have found in the library.  He felt instantaneous relief at seeing him there, frowning at the pages of the large book he was reading.  It wasn’t hard to imagine that he was probably frowning more at Bucky’s return than he was at the book contents, but some of those books were very much products of their time and incredibly dry and boring to boot.

 

“I see you found the library.”  He wondered if Steve had tried to sit on the antique settee in there stubbornly like most people did, or if he had given up quickly.  He’d been impulsive in stealing Steve without knowing him, all based on surface-level attraction and a few positive moments of flirtatious contact.

 

He wasn’t… Steve wasn’t an impulse buy, it was more like he was a drunk Vegas marriage and now both of them were trying to learn how to live around each other, especially considering in this scenario Bucky had been sober.

 

And Steve had been dead.

 

“It’s a nice room,” Steve answered, almost outright ignoring him.  “If I’m going to be prisoner here, at least you’re not keeping me hidden in the basement.”

 

Bucky sighed.  What he really needed was a nap, some real food, and a drunk-married-new-roommate who didn’t hate his guts.  Some of those were easier to fix than others.  He went into the front hallway closet and grabbed the overly large hoodie he wore in late autumn, tossing it at Steve.  “Let’s go for a walk.”

 

Steve stared at the hoodie like it was an infectious disease.  “If you wanted a pet to take around the block, you should have gotten a dog.”

 

Bucky gritted his teeth. “You want to get out of the house, we’ll get out of the house.”

 

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

 

“That’s your fucking choice,” Bucky snarled in a low, angry tone, stalking through the hallway and heading towards the kitchen, raising his voice so Steve could hear him.  “If you feel confident in movements, you can go for a walk your fucking self, but if you’re still stiff then it’s probably better if you have someone with you-”

 

He was cut off by the sound of the front door slamming.  Jesus Christ why.  He wasn’t sure he wanted someone who was complacent - he wasn’t a complacent kind of guy - but the deliberate antagonism Steve was showing would throw him over the edge.  Of course, it was better that Steve was waiting for Bucky to get home before lashing out and leaving the house.  It was better than getting back to Steve not being there.

 

And he’d completely forgotten to go out and buy Steve clothing or shoes.  This fucking, fucking day.  It couldn’t be over soon enough.

 

x.x.x.

 

Ten minutes later, the front door opened and Steve stepped through.  He looked winded and his movements were heavier than they were when he left.  They stared at each other for a moment.

 

Bucky bit his tongue and didn’t say ‘I told you so’ but it was a near-thing.  “Are you ready to sit down for a talk and listen about the procedure yet?”

 

Steve stripped off the hoodie and draped it over one of the hooks at the front entrance.  He looked like the last thing he wanted to do was talk to Bucky.  Wait until he heard that Bucky hadn’t figured out how to make the battery in his heart a renewable resource yet and he’d need recharging every week. Bucky was not looking forward to that conversation.

 

Wait until he heard about  _ Tyler _ .

 

“Fine,” he said, heading back into the living room and looking at Bucky like he was just waiting for him to continue proving that he was the scum beneath Steve's shoe.  

 

Fine.  If they were going to do this now, Bucky was going to bring Steve a copy of all of his research and let him read it at his leisure, so at least he could understand the amount of effort, time, and skill that went into bringing him back to life.  Steve seemed to be the type who liked having all the information, and Bucky didn’t really have anything to hide.

 

That wasn’t true.  Bucky had Steve.

 

For better or worse, his brain sneered at him.

 

x.x.x. 

 

After spending almost an hour being interrogated by Detective Sam Wilson about Steve’s body disappearing, and his evening being interrogated by Detective Steve Rogers about the modifications Bucky had done to his stolen body, with all honesty Bucky was seeing the complications of his decision in full high definition.  

 

Fuck, give him complacency so he didn’t didn’t have to deal with questions.  At least it wasn’t small talk.

 

He knew the moment Steve reached the notes about Tyler, the last test-subject before Steve Rogers’ body had fallen into his lap.  He also knew that the conclusion:  _ Too much brain deterioration to be successful, _ would hurt Steve more than it hurt Bucky.  Steve’s brow furrowed and he inhaled sharply through his nose, mouth turning down in a disgusted grimace.  

 

“You lied to me.  My whole… the only reason I ever spoke to you was because you promised to take care of him, and it was a lie.”

 

“He was cremated like I promised you.”

 

“After you experimented on him,” Steve hissed, betrayed and furious with it.  His face was turning a bright red color, and Bucky took a moment to admire that it could.  

 

Bucky didn’t know how to answer that.  Nothing he could say would make it better, and almost everything would make it worse.  “He was the breakthrough I needed to save you.”

 

By the look on Steve’s face that was the wrong approach to make entirely.

 

“It almost worked,” Bucky forged on, because apparently when faced with Steve’s ‘you’re evil scum’ face the answer was to make it worse.  “But even that information helped.  I know you don’t think of this as an opportunity right now, but if it had worked - and it almost did - would you have denied him the opportunity for a second chance?”

 

“You’re a fucking asshole with a megalomaniacal god complex.”

 

“That’s probably true,” Bucky agreed with a self-effacing grin, tapping the metal fingers of his left hand against the table.  It made a harsh clicking sound that drew Steve’s attention.  “But judging me for it isn’t going to make me feel any differently.  It doesn’t matter if you see what I did as a gift, because someone, somewhere, will take it as one.”

 

Bucky stood with dignity, even though his vision was wavering with exhaustion. “I’m going to bed.  I spent 36 hours in surgery with you and then I worked a full day. I’m not saying that to impress you, but if you understand one thing, it’s that none of it was done lightly.  Maybe I reacted and I definitely didn’t give you a choice, but your killer didn’t give you a choice either.  I did make a choice, every minute I kept going.  Every hour I didn’t give into exhaustion because I knew the longer it took me the more likely it was you wouldn’t come back? Also a choice.  So sit there and judge me, you’re welcome to it.  I’ll even encourage it.  But I hope you’ll also take the time to try to understand it.”

 

Steve snorted, but he was still looking down at Bucky’s files and notes when he left the room.

 

x.x.x.

 

Bucky to Becca: I need you to pick me up some things.

 

Bucky: I have a houseguest

 

Becca: Dirty

 

Bucky: Use the family account

 

Becca: That money is evil

 

He couldn't even argue with that.

 

Bucky: Then stop by my work and I'll give you cash

 

x.x.x.

 

Bucky heard the laughter the moment he opened the side door leading from the carport, and he paused with his hand on the doorknob in surprise.  It clearly wasn’t the laugh track from a television show.  There was a familiarity to it that he couldn’t place, until the person said something else and he realized it was Steve.  Steve was laughing.

 

He couldn’t hear what was being said, but he knew he could hear another person in the room with Steve, responding to him, and he felt chilled over it.  Surely Steve hadn't told someone he was alive?

 

“Bucky is that you?” Becca called, and he could picture her aiming her voice around the corner of the living room.  She’d grown up in this house.  She knew how sound carried just as well as he did.  Her voice was a relief.

 

“Yeah,” he called back, emerging from the stairway to find her sitting on an armchair with her legs criss-crossed in front of her.  There were a few shopping bags at her feet and Steve was holding a pair of sneakers in his hand.

 

“I picked up the stuff you asked me to grab for you,” she said, digging in her pocket and tossing him a cell phone.  “Including the text-capable disposable phone.”

 

Bucky caught it and handed it to Steve.

 

“I hope you’re not in trouble,” she said to both of them in a worried tone that told Bucky that she hadn’t figured it out yet.  His sister was a better person than any other Barnes before her.  Bucky had to keep reminding himself to be good, but Becca just  _ was _ .

 

Steve snorted.

 

His sister looked between the two of them, her eyes narrowing on Bucky with suspicion.  “What have you done?”  Bucky knew the moment she put it together because her eyes closed in exhaustion.  “You made it work,” she said with resignation.

 

“Becca…” Bucky started as she stood and grabbed her purse.  “I know you never supported what I’ve been trying to do.”

 

“I can’t be here right now,” she said, brushing by him.  “I love you, and part of me is proud of you, but I can’t help but feel like you’ve crossed a line.”

 

“It’s science.”  It was a kind of helpless, last-ditch effort, because even Bucky knew that wasn’t a great argument.  A lot of terrible things had been done in the face of science.

 

“It’s morally ambiguous science.  You promised me you wouldn’t kill anyone pursuing this. Don’t turn into him.”

 

“I haven’t.  Steve was already dead - Steve, tell Becks you were already dead.”

 

“Turn into who?” Steve asked instead.  And of course the cop would pick up on that.  

 

“Our father,” she answered.

 

“Becca!” Bucky snapped in warning. There were literal bones buried in the basement - metaphorical ones as well - and he couldn’t guarantee that Steve wouldn’t sniff them out in a righteous sense of justice.  He wouldn’t even disagree with him.  There were times when the idea of giving closure to a century's worth of missing people kept him up at night.  He knew that Becca felt it worse than he did.  Becca had only ever been down in the lab once, and that was more than enough for her.

 

“It’s not right,” she told him.  “Will you even recognize it when you go too far?”

 

Bucky didn’t say anything, watching her walk out the door. He stood there, listening to his sister leave, and realized Steve wasn’t saying anything. 

 

“What about your father?” Steve stared at him confrontationally, and Bucky could feel his energy levels for dealing with everything plummet at the stubborn expression on his face.  Steve would eventually get to the bottom of all of the Barnes family history, he was sure of it.

 

“Dr. Barnes was a brilliant surgeon who has been missing for more than a decade.”  By this point that explanation was completely by rote and Bucky managed not to roll his eyes too hard.  “There were some legal issues with a botched experimental surgery, so he’s probably living in Cape Verde eating kale and working as a private surgeon for the world’s richest underlords.”

 

Steve stared at him.  

 

“Enjoy your new phone,” Bucky continued.  “And shoes that fit.  If you need me I’ll be down in my lab working on improving your heart.”  He didn’t storm out, but it was a near-thing.


	4. Chapter 4

Bucky had learned a long time ago to take life as it was.  He kept his head down when he had to keep his head down, and soon enough it was what he was best at. He’d spent his life keeping secrets, his father had guaranteed that, and so weathering the speculation about where Detective Rogers body went was nothing in comparison.  His staff were talking, and soon the gossip reached the other levels of the building.  Lab technicians were especially vicious in their rumors.

 

Even so, after a few days when his new coffee maker was sabotaged, he had to square his shoulders and remind himself that he would have always regretted not trying to bring back Steve.

 

So it was a jolt to the system when he walked into the coffee shop for the first time since Steve’s death and saw him sitting there.  For a moment he wasn’t sure.  The man’s back was to him, and Bucky saw the broad, straight shoulders and the hood.  His eyes spanned down to the wrists, taking in the protrudence of the charging bolt hidden under thick material.  It wasn’t easy to spot unless you knew what you were looking for, and Bucky had painstakingly placed it there himself, the delicacy of working with the wrist and hands almost more difficult than the heart.

 

It was Steve.

 

Bucky sat across from him, echoing his silence.  Steve didn’t look up, didn’t acknowledge him in any way, he just kept spinning his cup of coffee with the tips of his fingers, the soft shhhhnk sound the only noise between them.  Bucky watched him for a moment, the dip of his chin and the tip of his nose the only skin visible beneath his wide hood and the downwards tilt of his head.

 

He looked sad.

 

Steve glanced up at him and his mouth turned up on the side like he was trying to smile.  It was devastating, not because of the attempt but because of the failure.

 

There were a lot of things Bucky could say to berate him, to point out the danger of Steve sitting out in public where anyone could see him and recognize him, but he’d also gotten to know Steve’s stubbornness and silences.  There was something about the whole situation that tugged at his heartstrings, and it was dangerous for Bucky to be moved by emotions.  They made people make stupid choices.  “I’m just going to ask you one question and then leave it alone: you understand the risk you sitting here has for both of us?”

 

“Yeah,” Steve answered, still turning the cup.  He could drink it if he wanted to, but coffee wouldn’t have the same effect on him anymore.  It was mostly full, like he’d gotten it as a prop with no intention of consuming it.

 

Sometimes you just had to stare morosely into a cup of coffee.  Bucky understood that.

 

“Ok,” Bucky said.  “Would you like me to leave?”

 

Steve looked up at him at that, his blue eyes looking startled.  “No, I… I like seeing you here,” he said, with a wan smile.  “The context of this place reminds me of the way my heart beat real quick every time I turned around and saw you behind me.”

 

Steve’s heart still beat, but it was a solid constant.  There weren’t any variations in it for excitement or fear or any number of reactions, and Bucky wondered if Steve was still feeling those things on a similar level or if it was a psychological block.  The fact that he wanted Bucky to be sitting with him as a reminder told Bucky that he was.  Steve’s mental health wasn’t something Bucky was equipped to help with.  “I can look into fixing that.”

 

“You’ve done enough,” Steve said, but it was in a softer tone than he usually used.  “You’ve done… I’m alive because of you.” He was looking into his coffee, but there was something soft in his expression.  When he looked up at Bucky he looked sad again, but it wasn’t filled with hatred. 

 

“Steve…” Bucky started to say.

 

“I’ve been sitting here for hours thinking about it,” Steve told him, cutting Bucky off.  “All these people - half of them I saw almost every day and none of them even paused to look in my direction.  You knew the moment you stepped through the door.”

 

“That’s not fair.  I have inside knowledge that I should be looking for you.”

 

Steve bit his lip and didn’t meet his eyes.  “I think it is fair.  I think that you’re used to looking for me, because I noticed the moment you walked through the door too. You would have seen me whether you were the one who brought me back or not, and I think… I’ve been angry at you, and I still am, but I understand a bit better now.  I died.”

 

“Yeah,” Bucky answered, and he didn’t know what else to say.  Steve kept surprising him.

 

“I’m sorry that you had to make that choice.”  Steve looked up and met his eyes and they observed each other for a moment.  “Ah,” he said in reaction to whatever he saw on Bucky’s face.  “Yeah, that’s what makes it more difficult for me to forgive you.”

 

Bucky would like to say he didn’t know what Steve was talking about, but he did.  The way Bucky considered bringing Steve back to life as not an active choice wasn’t romantic.  He hadn’t done it solely for Steve, and in the moment Bucky was hard pressed to admit he’d considered Steve at all in the equation.  It was that knowledge that was keeping them apart.  Steve was good at reading people, and he knew that part of Bucky was happy for the opportunity of Steve’s death.  “I don’t like it about myself either.”

 

Steve nodded once, and Bucky looked at him.  He wasn’t sure if it was a good thing for Steve to let go of his anger or not.  It was either healthy or it was a sign he really, really wasn't.

 

“I have to go back to work,” Bucky said, and took a risk by reaching out to touch Steve, just a light brush against his forearm.  “If you want a drive home let me know.  I’m off at 5.”

 

Steve nodded in acknowledgment that he’d heard, but he seemed lost in thought. Bucky left him in the cafe and didn’t realize that he’d forgotten to get coffee until he got back to the morgue.  He felt like he didn’t need the caffeine pick-me-up anymore, and it was trite and stupid and a ton of other adjectives, but he felt more energized after seeing Steve.

 

He felt like smiling.  He wasn’t sure if that was lame or not, but it felt like every other time he’d left the coffee shop after seeing Steve.  It felt like hope.

 

He didn’t expect Steve to reach out, but when he was gathering his things he found a text from him from 4:52 pm saying that he was still in the neighborhood.  Bucky tried not to imagine Steve sitting across from the police station brooding, watching the cops come and go, and hoping one of them would acknowledge him and the truth could come out.

 

**Bucky:** ok I’m omw out, meet you on the corner by the bank?

 

Because the result of Steve’s body disappearing?  Better morgue security.  It was a good thing that Steve was  _ it _ , or else Bucky would be shit out of luck.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Descriptions of a car accident they're on-scene at up ahead.

It became a habit for Steve to text Bucky a few times a week for a drive back to the house. Bucky never asked the exact reason he had to be hanging around the police station.  He should want to know, but he figured it was better if he didn’t.  If he wanted Steve to trust him, that had to go both ways.

 

Exactly a week after Steve died, they approached an intersection seconds after a devastating collision, the shriek of metal colliding still reverberating in the air as Bucky’s foot slammed on the breaks, even though they had already slowed to almost a full stop.

 

“Shit,” Bucky said, easing his car to side of the street.  “Call it in,” he told Steve, reaching behind him for the small medical kit he kept behind the passenger seat.  “And stay here.”

 

“But -” Steve started to say.  

 

Bucky slammed the car door behind him and hurried through the few people who had rushed to help and then paused uncertainly around the accident.  “I’m a doctor,” he said, beginning to take charge of the scene. Back when he had been a resident, he’d been along on a few emergency room calls, and he knew how to assess a scene for dangers as well as prioritize where to start. “Can you call 911?” he asked one of the people at random, even though he knew it was redundant. The perception of looking like he was in control and competent basically established his credentials in a scene like this.

 

The people who were in one of the cars had already gotten out and were sitting on the sidewalk.  One looked like they had a head injury, a wound bleeding rather liberally, but Bucky was more interested in the person in the smaller vehicle.  They hadn’t gotten out after the accident, and the bystander who went to help them seemed to be struggling to open the door.

 

Bucky walked up next to the door and peered inside. There was a lot of blood pooling on the floor of the vehicle, and the legs appeared to be disappearing into the dashboard. Back when this was his job, he would have taken one look at all the blood, at the mangled front end of the car, and triaged the scene as either a red or a black.  Extreme emergency or death imminent. 

 

But he was the only person at the scene who looked like they knew how to help, so either way Bucky was it. “I’m a doctor,” he repeated to the frantic bystander an easy, confident tone.  “I’m here to help.  Find something to pry the window open with,” Bucky instructed, dropping his medical kit and pulling on a pair of latex gloves.  He dug through the bag to see if he had anything to use as a tourniquet. 

 

He looked up sharply at the sound of the glass breaking and winced.  The window had been severely spider-webbed, but it had withstood the accident. Glass complicated things.

 

Bucky leaned through the window, glass shards crunching beneath him and he took in the damage.  Blood had slowed to a drip, which wasn’t a good sign considering how much of it was pooled on the floor to the point where Bucky could see it, even in the shadows.

 

Bucky didn’t have the lines of sight or the mobility to do much good.  If he crawled in the passenger side he might be able to figure something out.

 

Steve crouched next to him, not bothering to put on the latex gloves in Bucky’s kit. His eyes took in the scene like a professional.  “Ambulance is arriving.  The door needs to come off first, doesn’t it?”

 

“Yeah, ETA on the fire department?” 

 

Steve shrugged.  Then he looked behind them.  “I lifted the couch in your living room the other day.”

 

“...Ok?” Bucky asked, and then caught on as Steve’s fingers curled around the door handle and he tugged.  The metal groaned but didn’t give, so he adjusted his grip so he was able to wedge his fingers around the door and get a good handle, pulling it almost straight off in a single, groaning tug that shouldn’t be physically possible and Bucky paused, agape, as Steve dropped the door on the ground.  “That’s…”

 

Bucky didn’t know what to say.  That wasn’t possible, his brain supplied.  That wasn’t something he anticipated.  That was weirdly attractive.

 

Fuck it, he’d leave discussing it for later, he decided, moving in to stabilize the person in the car. “Give me your belt,” he told Steve. 

 

Steve’s eyebrow lifted as he looked at Bucky with judgement in his expression, like he was wondering if Bucky knew what he was doing.  Bucky _wondered_ if he knew what he was doing.  Steve did what Bucky asked, anyway.  

 

“I do know what I’m doing, you know,” he continued conversation with Steve as he worked.  Faking it til making it was basically residency 101 - confidence, that was.  Maybe a bit of knowledge too.  “I wasn’t always a medical examiner.  I wanted to be a surgeon, once.”

 

"But you're not," Steve pointed out.  Bucky took it as Steve wanting to ask without coming right out and asking.  At least he didn't assume Bucky had flunked out.

 

Bucky stood back as the paramedics arrived, updating them as he moved out of the way on what he’d already done. He recognized one of them as someone who regularly delivered DOA bodies to him and he mentally cursed at the realization that Steve had been there next to him.  He’d disappeared once they arrived, so Bucky could only hope he was waiting in the car.

 

“You did what you could to save him,” Steve told him once Bucky sat in the driver’s seat, allowing his head to hit against the backrest.

 

Bucky flexed his left hand, listening to the gears whir as each finger moved naturally like it was flesh and blood.  He wasn’t thinking of how the man would probably lose his legs the same way Bucky had lost his left arm.  He was thinking of when he’d gotten Steve to his lab and sewed the delicate artery wall of his femoral artery back together, as precise as a surgeon.  

 

Bucky didn’t make the decision to become medical examiner easily.  On his darker days he wasn’t sure he made it at all.  The only person who looked at his metal prosthetic and had confidence he had the fine motor skills needed to be a surgeon was Stark.  Hospital administration and medical boards in the city weren’t nearly as confident.  

 

At the time Bucky hadn’t been confident either.

 

Maybe, if Bucky had stuck with it, had stayed to prove himself, he might have been able to do it.  At the time he’d been too shaken up to do more than divert the trajectory of his life away from surgery.  He’d seen what the drive for excellence had done to his father and grandfather, but he’d also witnessed death up close and personal.  It lived inside him.

 

He didn’t want to prevent it, that was someone else’s fight.  He wanted to control it.

 

Bucky wondered sometimes who had more of a god complex, and in ways he didn’t think it was his father. 

 

“Maybe,” he answered Steve’s observation a long, drawn-out moment after he made it.  “Or else I might be seeing him soon.”

 

x.x.x.

 

Steve looked uncertain as he undressed, eyeing the chair like it wasn’t something he could go through with.  The sleeve of his shirt got caught on the bolt on his wrist, and Steve looked at it like he had that first day - as a foreign object and a betrayal of his autonomy.  There was a silence in the air between them of awkward reflection and things unsaid.  Bucky knew deep down that Steve was considering just… letting go.  It might be easier for both of them if he did, but at the same time Bucky wanted to beg Steve to sit down and let Bucky go through with the procedure.

 

Easier wasn’t better, and Bucky had never taken the easy road.  He didn’t think Steve did either.

 

Steve hesitated.  “What would happen if I decided not to?”

 

They’d been over this the first night, but if Steve needed to hear it again, then Bucky would go over it until time was up.  “In the most basic sense eventually your heart will give out and you’ll die again.”

 

Steve continued to stare at the chair.

 

“It’s your choice,” Bucky continued.  “I won’t make this one for you.”

 

It looked like it took Steve major effort not to remind Bucky of all the choices he had made on his behalf that led them to this moment.  The fact that he managed it was the surprising part.  Steve nodded and removed his underwear, sitting completely naked in the leather chair.  When Bucky had been operating on him, it had been done with a surgeon’s gaze with the same level of detachment he had with all the people on his table.  He ruthlessly forced himself into that mindset so he wouldn’t accidentally look at Steve’s body and stepped forward to hook Steve up.

 

Steve’s face looked stubborn and like he was prepared for the worst. 

 

Which was… accurate.

 

“It’ll hurt.”  It was an apology and a warning at once.  Bucky briefly put his hand on Steve’s shoulder for comfort, but he squared his shoulders as a way to steel himself and also tell Bucky he didn’t need reassurances, especially from the person who did this to him.

 

Or, Bucky imagined that was what he was saying, at least.  It certainly fit with everything else Steve had said to him.

 

“Ok?” Bucky asked, fitting a mouth guard between his teeth.

 

Steve bit down, jaw flexing as he glared up at Bucky with eyes that looked more scared than they did angry.  Bucky had to take his own deep breath to steel himself before flipping the switch.

 

x.x.x.

 

It was difficult to watch.  The first time, Steve hadn’t been alive and the process had been to give him life, and so he hadn’t felt it.  Bucky had been riding a high of his own accomplishment, and watching Steve being electrocuted had been a fantastic experience for him.  It had been a crowning achievement of success.  This time, he was watching Steve being tortured with his hand on the switch to stop it.

 

It was awful.  Steve’s body was tense with pain, his face contorted around the mouth guard as he screamed, and Bucky wanted to place his hands over his ears or grab Steve’s hand for comfort or stop the procedure entirely.

 

“Don’t you dare,” Steve said, voice garbled around the mouth guard, as Bucky reached for the emergency-off button.  “I can do it.”

 

Jesus Christ.  This was not humane.  Bucky was torturing someone  _ alive _ .  Contrary to common belief, he did have a conscience and some sense of right and wrong, and this was so wrong no matter how stubborn Steve was.

 

Finally, it was over, and Bucky was able to ease the electricity off gradually.

 

Steve uncurled his fingers from the armrest of the chair.  Each moved painfully.  He looked lost and terrified.  “I’m a monster,” he finally said in a thick tone, accepting the water Bucky held out to him.

 

Oh.  Oh fuck, was that what Steve had been worrying about?

 

“You’re not the monster,” Bucky said carefully, taking Steve’s face in his hands. It wasn’t the soft kind of romantic touch Bucky had once imagined between them.  It was a focus for Steve, who seemed listless and disoriented, like he regretted not just… allowing his charge to run out.  “I want you to listen very carefully to me.  I’m the monster.  I took your body without your consent, experimented on it, and didn’t considered what actually happened if I succeeded.  Do you understand?”

 

Steve nodded once.  “You’re brilliant.”

 

That was a new mood.  Bucky had never heard Steve refer to him as anything other than an asshole before.  “There are words for people like me, who allow brilliance to be more important than being a good person.  I know you know all of them.”

 

Steve acknowledged that with a nod and a wry twist of his lips, which was more familiar territory.  “I don’t know what to do with my… life.  I can’t be a cop anymore. I’ve been declared dead.”

 

“It’s ok,” Bucky said, crouching on the floor in front of him so Steve didn’t have to look up at him.  He took Steve’s fingers in his.  “Not to know.  I didn’t leave you a choice.  There are things to figure out for both of us.”

 

“I don’t have a compass or a plan.  I don’t exist.  I know everything should still be the same, that nothing changed inside me, but I’m so untethered.”

 

Another thing Bucky hadn’t considered beforehand: a listless, directionless depression setting in.  His bad.  “I think that’s normal.  I know it seems like I should either have better answers or shut up, but I don’t.  It’s been a week, and I think we’re both getting a little more familiar with it all.”

 

Steve shrugged, but his eyes were more focused and he was more present in the conversation.  “I’m so angry most of the time. What you did to me - I’m trying to forgive that.  I’m not finding it any easier to forgive you than forgiving the people who killed me.  I’m not…” he jerked one shoulder, hard, a more aggressive way of indicating his uncertainty and anger.  “I’ve been angry at something or other all of my life. But it’s never felt like this.  It’s personal.”  Steve put his closed fist over his heart and looked at Bucky. 

 

Bucky didn’t know what to say. He’d taken something from Steve just as much as the person who killed him did, and it wasn’t a perspective he’d ever considered being concerned about.  “You don’t need to forgive me,” Bucky told him.  He meant it, but it also felt like a peace offering.  “But I think if you find a way to channel some of that anger, then it might help you feel more like yourself.  What would help with that?”

 

Steve didn’t say anything, staring at Bucky and then getting to his feet.  “I don’t know.”

 

“Maybe make a list?” Bucky suggested, leaning backwards so he could watch Steve pull his underwear back on, bundle the rest of his clothes under his arm, and leave the lab.  He sat there on the cold cement floor for a long while after Steve left, thinking.  

 

But later, when Bucky was grabbing a snack in the kitchen, he found a half-formed list stuck to the fridge.

 

 

**THINGS I SHOULD WORK ON:**

CLOSURE

see Sam

Purpose

~~ Forgive Bucky? ~~

Channel anger

???

Forgive Bucky?

~~See Europe?~~ No passport

 

It was a lot more question marks than ideas, and the idea that Steve might have been robbed of a future that was still out of his reach hurt Bucky’s heart a little.


	6. Chapter 6

It wasn’t really a surprise that Steve’s funeral was a full house.  If he had even a fraction of the impact on other people as he had on Bucky, then it made sense for the church to be full. Steve had touched a lot of people during his lifetime so it also wasn’t a surprise for cops not to be the only people in attendance.  Steve was the type of person to help someone and then follow up with them to make sure they were ok, to buy someone groceries when they needed them or to help someone move out of an abusive household by putting those muscles to good use.

 

He was the kind of man who knew his neighbors and stood up for them - or stood up to them.

 

He was well loved, and he was missed. Bucky knew all of that because people were sharing stories about Steve, and there were tears of loss.  It made Bucky feel guilty for keeping Steve to himself, but it wasn’t his fault that Steve had died, and there was a lot more to it than Bucky locking Steve in a cage and refusing to allow him to leave.  Bucky wasn't a religious person.  At all. It was one of those things his father hadn't been a complete hypocrite about, so it didn't occur to him that Steve's problems adjusting might be deeper than Bucky gave them credit for.

 

No one said a word about Steve’s body disappearing except in whispers, and Bucky was relieved to find that the most prevalent rumor wasn’t about him.  There was speculation that someone took Steve in order to deliberately desecrate him, and the longer it had been since the theft, the more his precinct expected a very public and horrific spectacle.  

 

The issue with being the type of good person that Steve was turned out to be that he angered a lot of very powerful people.

 

It made Bucky smile, not because the focus was off him, but because it was so very  _ Steve _ .

 

It also wasn’t a surprise to watch Steve sneak in shortly after the service started and sit in the back pew, looking like he was ready to bolt at any second.  It was probably difficult for him to leave his hood on, a massive show of disrespect.  Bucky expected him to be there, but the way Steve moved so silently now that it seemed like he appeared between one moment and the next was amazing.  He’d come so far in less than two weeks.

 

**Bucky to Steve:**

Slouch your shoulders when you walk out. You have a very distinctive posture.

 

**Steve:** No one will notice. They never do.

 

**Bucky:** This is your FUNERAL. They’re all thinking about you. 

 

**Bucky:**   I can’t be the only one who watched you walk away every time. Slouch your shoulders.

 

Steve didn’t answer him, and Bucky kept his eyes towards the front.  He noticed Steve quietly get up and leave halfway through, right after Sam Wilson gave his eulogy. There hadn’t been a dry eye in the house, including Bucky’s.  Wilson’s grief at Steve’s loss was palpable as he recounted a story highlighting all of Steve’s great qualities as a police officer and as a friend.  He told of Steve’s compassion and his kindness and how he could embody a Fight Me attitude with the worst kind of people to piss off.

 

Sam snorted, and the fact it had gotten Steve killed hung in the air for a moment before he started to cry.

 

Steve didn’t leave until after Sam was completely finished speaking.

 

Bucky considered how difficult it must be to attend your own funeral.  He’d probably leave too.  It must be worse when you couldn’t stand up and comfort your best friend.  Bucky had almost expected Steve to do it anyway, to stand up and declare himself Not Dead just so Sam Wilson would stop crying.

 

It would be pretty funny to watch, Bucky decided.  If Steve’s ‘fight me’ attitude meant that he’d also stand up mid-service and tell them all he was alive and kicking.

 

x.x.x.

  

It had been a long day.  There’d been an altercation in well-known gang territory leaving 12 people dead and no known survivors (willing to step forward at least - that part wasn’t his job to investigate).  Bucky had been called in the moment after he’d returned from Steve’s funeral, had taken one look at the scene and knew it was a bad one.  It was at least mostly confined to the back room of a restaurant, and it looked like someone had thrown a grenade into the room and then made quick work of the confusion and devastation of the contained explosion to slaughter any survivors with a knife.  

 

The room was bathed in blood, and all of them bled out quickly.  Efficiently.

 

But the further into the room Bucky moved, the more horrific the death became.  There was anger there in the gaping, efficient wounds, and the jagged decapitation and dismemberment of the the last 3 bodies in the room.

 

It was a statement, and a loud one.

 

Identifying the bodies and the body parts was going to be a full time job for the rest of the week.  He’d called in a few casual workers for the night shift to clear as much of the non-case related backlog as possible.  Then he went home after his double shift, exhausted from the emotional rollercoaster of the day, and the amount of people he’d had to make small talk with - from the gathering after Steve’s funeral to the uniforms on scene who all looked terrified as they took in the slaughter and back to the extra attendants in his morgue.

 

Bucky expected to return home close to midnight, trundle upstairs to bed, wake up hours before his shift was supposed to start, and then rinse and repeat.

 

Instead he opened the door to the scent of food cooking, and he paused in the doorway of the living room to blink at Steve.  He was curled up in the chair he’d claimed as his own, his bare toes curled deeply into the cushions, barely reacting to Bucky returning home.  The last time Bucky had seen him had been at his funeral, so despite his own exhaustion he took Steve in carefully to see if he was ok.  

 

Bucky wasn’t sure he’d be able to tell the difference if he wasn’t.

 

“I turned the crockpot on,” Steve said without looking up from his book.  It was another of the larger tomes from the library that Bucky wasn’t sure had been read for over a century.

 

Bucky paused and opened his mouth in surprise at the domesticity of that statement.  “What?” he questioned in disbelief, sure that he’d misunderstood. 

 

Steve looked up and scowled at him, mouth turned down.  “I was hungry, so there’s food.”

 

“You were hungry?” Bucky echoed, knowing Steve was probably going to stab him for needing clarification.  “So you made food and you’re sharing it?”

 

“Don’t get used to it, I’m not your servant or your live-in partner,” he snapped in return.  Then he closed his eyes and seemed to regroup, visibly calming himself.  “You can have some if you like.”

 

And there it was, the familiar stab through the heart.  Steve would probably never forgive him for locking him away from the world, even if 1. Bucky’s house was really cool, and 2. Steve was allowed to  _ leave _ .  Even so, Steve’s words seemed to be more because of the principle of the matter rather than actual ire.

 

Still, Bucky wasn’t going to repeat that convo again.  “Thanks,” he said, moving towards the kitchen.  Steve made stew, and Bucky wondered if he was looking for a hearty meal or for comfort food.  He probably should have taken more psychology classes and then he could at least make an amateur guess about what the fuck Steve was thinking, or at least how to help someone through the aftermath of attending their own funeral.

 

Or not. The last thing he needed was to make it worse.  He sat at the kitchen counter eating from his bowl, wishing that there was something he could say or do to make things better, and not looking forward to going into work hours before his normal shift.  

 

Steve wandered into the kitchen a few minutes later and Bucky smiled at him.  “It’s good.”

 

Steve looked pleased. He wasn’t outright smiling, but there was a softness around his mouth as he poured himself a glass of water.   “Thanks.”

 

It was almost enough to compensate for the exhaustion Bucky felt at the idea of the upcoming work he had to do. 

 

“My mom used to make it for me when I was recovering from being sick,” Steve told him, leaning back against the counter as he drank his water.  “A nice hearty irish stew to fill your belly and your heart,” he continued with a rueful smile, sounding like he was quoting something said to him.  “It felt necessary today.”

 

Bucky looked over and met his eyes.  “I’m sorry.”

 

“I know,” Steve answered.  “I’m sorry I snapped at you when all you wanted was clarification.  I’m a little…” Steve shook his head and snorted.  “...fucked up tonight.”

 

“There’s a bottle of vodka in that cupboard over there if you want it.”

 

Steve didn’t look at it, he just turned a little sheepish, his mouth pulling into a closed-lip grin as he scrubbed his hand through the hair on the back of his head.  “I tried that.  I can’t, anymore.”

 

Bucky paused, a spoonful of stew hovering over his bowl as he gave Steve his full attention.  “What else can’t you do?”  He couldn't drink. He was unrealistically strong.  What other unintentional changes happened with Steve's body?

 

“I don’t know.”  He shrugged, but he’d gone from looking relaxed with the conversation to tense.  Either he was hiding something or he really didn’t want the reminder of everything that had changed, especially tonight.  Considering.  _ Everything _ . Bucky let it go.

 

“Maybe we’ll get you some marijuana and see what happens,” he joked, finally eating the bite of stew. It was a point of pride with Bucky that his hand didn’t shake and dislodge any of the contents of the spoon.  Take that medical board.  

 

“I… what?  Bucky!” Steve exclaimed in a surprised tone.  And then he laughed.

 

x.x.x.

 

Bucky saw Wilson speaking with one of the Assistant MEs when he returned from break with a coffee and a large muffin.  He had a tupperware container full of the leftovers from Steve’s stew in his office, but it was still a long time til lunch and he’d already been working for hours.  Sam looked just as haggard as Bucky felt, still wearing the suit from the funeral, wrinkled and slept in.

 

He was getting old.  At least Sam had the excuse that his best friend and partner had died.  Bucky’s excuse was that he had an unwilling roommate who kept stressing him out by wandering into his own funeral without doing much to disguise himself other than throwing on a hoodie.  Stealthy he was not.

 

And then there were the bodies.  So many bodies and body parts, with a lot of pressure from the higher ups to get it finished.  The assistant was in the process of trying to identify the knife that had beheaded one, and Sam was hovering over her shoulder looking concerned and frazzled.

 

Bucky had almost believed that Sam looked like he had a  _ night _ .  It was case-related, then.

 

Rough.

 

Still, that didn’t give him the right to hover and make Bucky’s staff nervous.  

 

“Wilson, I must be imagining you down here hassling one of my assistants as she tries to do her job.  Look at her.  I can already tell she’s going to have to redo the cast because you make her nervous.  Come into my office if you want to subject someone to your lovely personality.”

 

Detective Wilson bared his teeth at Bucky, but followed him through the door.

 

“Here,” Bucky said, putting his muffin down in front of the chair in front of his desk.  “You look like you’re running on fumes.  Soon you’ll be eating my staff instead of chewing them out.”

 

“Do you know who she’s working on?”

 

“I suspect it’s the gang leader I’ve been hearing about,” Bucky said in an unconcerned tone as he reached into his bottom drawer and pulled out one of his emergency energy drinks. He put it on the table next to his coffee.  “Which one do you want?”

 

Sam was disrupted from what looked to be a tirade as he blinked at Bucky’s hand, clearly thrown.  “What are you, twelve?”

 

“Are you kidding me?  I wouldn’t let a twelve year old near one of these things.  It would probably stunt their growth and make them grow a third eye.”  Despite this, he pushed his coffee across the table towards Wilson.  He was a kind, kind person.  He deserved awards.

 

“Medical opinion?” Wilson snarked, but he did lift the coffee and drink it.

 

“Abso-fucking-lutely.  I’ll publish a study and give it to Jenny McCarthy.”

 

Wilson snorted as he shoved a piece of muffin into his mouth.  “Jesus Christ,” he said.  “Ok. I get it now.  The two of you would have been perfect for each other.”  Then he ran his hand over his face.  “I must be tired.”

 

“You must be if you’ve gone from harassing me to giving me compliments.  Why are you here?”

 

“I’m trying to stop a gang war.  The situation is on tenterhooks right now, but it’s escalating quickly.”

 

“It’s not getting better if you keep interrupting my staff at work,” Bucky pointed out, taking a swig of the energy drink.  His stomach rebelled, roiling displeasure that turned into hunger pains.

 

“Your staff should be able to work through distractions,” Wilson grumbled, his mouth half-full of muffin.

 

Fuck.  Bucky was starving and the only food he had was his lunch.  Fine, he could find a food truck or go back to the cafe and buy an overpriced sandwich, but he was totally giving in.  “I agree with you,” Bucky told him, grabbing his lunch bag from beneath his desk and drawing out the strew.  “I’ll talk to her, but when she doesn’t have someone sitting on her shoulder, her work is some of the best I’ve seen.  Some things can’t be rushed, no matter how much pressure is put on it.  It’s science.”

 

“Steve was better at inspiring and motivating people than I am, but believe me.  You don’t want to be on the streets once they regroup and become organized again.  No one has stepped in to claim it, but… well, I may as well just tell you. We suspect that the head you have on your table out there ordered Steve’s death.  This looks like revenge.  From someone very skilled and very angry.”

 

“From you?” Bucky asked, mouth full of room temperature stew. It wasn’t as disgusting as it sounded, but it had certainly tasted better the night before while he was sitting in his kitchen and hearing Steve laugh. “Organizationally, not specifically.”

 

Wilson stared at him.  “What are you eating?”

 

“Don’t cast stones,” Bucky grumbled, shoving in another mouthful just to be contrary.  “You’re sitting there eating my snack and I’ve been here since 5 am working on all these fucking bodies.”

 

“That too,” Wilson acknowledged.  “But it smells familiar.”

 

Bucky paused and shrugged.  “I don’t know what to tell you,” he replied, and it was definitely his own fault for not considering that before he’d taken it out.  He could sigh behind Steve’s back all he wanted to about his inability to be stealthy, but at least he’d never stood right in front of Wilson’s face with it.

 

That Bucky knew of.

 

“I need to get back to my desk.  You’ll see your staff sends me a notification that the results are ready ASAP.”

 

“Sure,” Bucky answered easily because that was the exact procedure they already used for priority cases.  He wouldn’t even have to make an effort for that to happen.

 

“I appreciate the muffin and the coffee,” Wilson told him as he left.  The stew and energy drink combo was giving Bucky indigestion, or maybe that was the idea that he was about to follow Wilson out of his office and work on Steve’s killers to either prove or disprove the idea that it was a rogue cop getting revenge.  He thought about the efficient way the bodies had been sliced open and left to bleed out, and how the last time he’d seen a wound with the same practical intent had been the night he’d stolen Steve and had to repair him before he started doing anything else.  There hadn’t been many people who’d seen the details of Steve’s body, and Detective Wilson was among them.  

 

He didn’t seem the type, but Bucky had seen far stranger things.


	7. Chapter 7

Bucky jolted awake to a hand on his shoulder, strong fingers curved around the bones and meat of it in a way that reminded him too much of his father for comfort. He inhaled, jagged and disoriented, as he came awake. He couldn’t control his terror response any more than he could have controlled falling asleep in his lab in the first place.  He had so much more work to do on Steve's heart, and then there was his strength.  Bucky was a scientist, he couldn't just brush that off.  So he'd fallen asleep because he was already exhausted and guilty over not dedicating more time in his lab.  Waking up to someone touching him made his heart beat rapidly and his brain come online suddenly screaming _danger._

 

Steve stepped back with his hands raised in front of him, intuitively understanding that he needed space.

 

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” Steve said in a gentle voice.  “It’s cold down here, and it’s very late.”

 

“You didn’t,” Bucky replied, scrubbing a hand over his face.  “The last person to wake me like that was my father, years ago. I was reacting to the memory.”

 

Steve stared at him, and unlike most of the other times Steve had looked at him, this wasn’t hardened anger.  Steve was seeing something Bucky had taken pains to bury.  “You were scared,” he finally said, still using a calming tone, but not quite managing it.  It was a blunt observation beneath it all.

 

It was probably some kind of cop training 101.  That Steve had only passed through virtue of sucking at it less than half the other trainees. 

 

“I didn’t say it was a good memory,” Bucky responded, not bothering with lying to Steve.  “I lived in fear of him long before he went missing.”  That was a kind of honesty he’d never had to vocalize before.  Becca had always just known, shared experiences tended to do that, and there hadn’t been anyone else to tell.

 

Steve’s expression was full of regret, but regret of what Bucky couldn’t say.  Maybe prompting Bucky to talk about it.  

 

“It’s done with,” Bucky told him with a sharp shrug, getting to his feet.  He almost knocked the prototype for Steve’s new heart on the floor.  Bucky had always been fascinated by biomechatronics.  How was that for fucking irony? He’d done an internship at Stark Enterprises a few years before his accident while he was still double majoring in engineering and pre-med as an undergrad.  He’d  _ helped  _ create the technology in his arm.

 

Engineering wasn’t the point of Bucky’s education.  Using it as an application for medicine was, so while he could have a career from it - the Barnes name was still good for a lot of things - he would still rather live with a scalpel in his hand.

 

Steve reached out a hand to steady the table, and Bucky backed away, heading for the stairs that would lead into the basement.  He heard Steve follow him, but he didn’t look back.

 

x.x.x.

 

Before Bucky knew it, the week was up and he was standing next to Steve in his basement lab again as Steve stripped off his clothes with utile movements.  He’d spent less time down there working in the past week than he meant to, and looking at Steve’s hesitancy in sitting in the chair he felt a pang of guilt.  He should still be working on improving, but instead he was - 

 

Bucky wasn’t sure what he was doing.  He and Steve weren’t on good terms, despite the improvement between them in the last week, but Bucky still enjoyed being in his presence.  The only time he’d retreated to the lab was to get away from Steve, and Bucky wanted to fix what was between them more than he wanted to improve on his technique.

 

And that?

 

Not great.  He’d have to make sure to eke out some time for research.  Watching Steve strip and sit in the chair, flinching at his bare skin against the cold leather, was a good reminder that it was selfish for Bucky to stop moving forward scientifically.

 

“I’m sorry I haven’t been working down here as much as I should be,” he said as he hooked Steve up.

 

Steve shrugged one shoulder, careful not to dislodge the charging wires Bucky had placed on his neck.  “You put a lot of pressure on yourself,” he observed in a neutral tone.  “I know this last week was exhausting.

 

Bucky hummed in a noncommittal tone.  “Still.”

 

“I’m not a joy to be around,” Steve admitted, and Bucky laughed before he thought better of it.  “I know,” Steve continued with a smile hovering on his lips.  “I’ve been working on the list, and I think I’m starting to feel more like myself.”

 

“I’m glad,” Bucky answered, amazed as Steve threw him a jaunty salute right before Bucky threw the on switch for the electricity to charge through him.

 

It was still brutal to watch, but Steve held on and suffered through it quietly, his muscles tensed so rigidly it was amazing his bones weren’t shattering.  The air smelled like electricity, ozone and nitric oxide, and the vague scent of something burning, and it was a familiar scent to him by now.  He kept his eyes on Steve throughout it all, watching carefully.

 

He realized he was nervous for Steve, confident enough in his own work to bring Steve back to life, but fretting to see Steve actually going through it.  He didn’t like causing Steve pain, but it was more than that.  Despite his confidence, there was a small spark of fear that it wouldn’t work.  That this was the time it would break down on him, and he’d lose everything.

 

And he wasn’t talking about his experiment.

 

Caring was something Bucky should have anticipated, but hadn’t.  He knew that he’d look at Steve and feel a sense of pride, possessive about the strong lines of stitches still visible on Steve’s pale skin and the way the bolts in his neck and wrists sometimes peaked out of his clothing and reflected light.

 

“How do you feel?” Bucky asked, unplugging Steve from the machine.  The lines in his body were still tense beneath Bucky’s gaze despite the fact he was no longer hooked up.  Bucky tried to be as clinical as possible as he looked, already knowing that there weren’t singe marks around any of the charging bolts - which was a good sign - but trying to get a feel for Steve’s general well being.

 

Especially since Steve would rather tear his own heart out than tell Bucky himself.

 

“Just one more moment,” Bucky said, grabbing his stethoscope so he could listen to the rhythm of Steve’s artificial heart.  He could get a read out from more sophisticated machines, but he didn’t own any.  Even if he did, the static charge around Steve might throw it off.  Bucky could feel the hair on the back of his arm stand on end as he completed his final check.

 

The moment he was done, Steve was out of the chair and on the other side of the room, putting his clothing back on.  Bucky gave him his privacy, fiddling with the equipment until Steve opened the door and left.

 

It might go beyond a crush, beyond pride and possession, beyond concern for being caught.  Bucky might be in love with Steve Rogers.


	8. Chapter 8

Bucky was being watched.  He had an acute sense for it, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end.  It was a honed skill.  

 

“Did you transfer into homicide, Detective Wilson?” Bucky questioned, looking up from the rebar slammed so hard through the victim’s chest that it was imbedded in the brick behind him to find Steve’s former partner watching him with a thoughtful expression on his face.  He brushed off his knees and stood, joining Wilson to the right of the body.

 

“Another one of my open cases,” Wilson said, gesturing with his hand at the victim.  "I’m not lead on this, but I’ve been brought in for my familiarity with the case.”

 

What was that theory called where you swore you never met anyone before but then you saw them so often that you knew you had to be wrong about that?  Yeah.

 

Sam Wilson.

 

“Queasy?” Bucky asked, watching as Wilson grimaced as someone arrived with heavy equipment to separate the rebar from the wall.

 

“No,” Wilson answered.  “Annoyed.”

 

“Yeah,” Bucky said, turning away to give instructions on how to remove the pole without compromising the body.  “I regularly feel that way when called out for these things, but probably for different reasons.  Do the uniforms get younger and stupider every year?”

 

Wilson squinted at him.  “How old are you? 27?”

 

“32,” Bucky answered, narrowing his eyes.

 

“My mistake,” Wilson said.  “I assumed anyone who wore Converse to wade in blood had to be in their 20s.”

 

Bucky looked down at his feet.  “Shit!” he hissed, sharp and with genuine dismay as he saw the viscous staining his sneakers.  “I forgot to change out of them.”

 

Wilson was laughing at him, but it was a friendly jab, and Bucky wasn’t used to someone noticing when he did something dumb.  He kept to himself and most people respected that by ignoring him.  He was interrupted from saying something sarcastic back by the smell of smoke and a popping noise as not only did the rebar completely fail to pull out of the wall, but the equipment seemed to be on the verge of catching fire.

 

“Fuck!” Bucky said again, leaping into action to check on the body. “Someone find replacement rescue equipment or so help me I will pull that bar out with my bare hands and beat all of you with it, crime scene or not.”

 

“Nice,” Wilson observed with a sarcastic tone, coming up beside Bucky to stare down at the smoking equipment.  “No wonder they all love you so much.”

 

Bucky rolled his eyes and shrugged.  “I’m just doing my job, and right now my job is supervising the removal and transport of dead guy skewer.”

 

“I meant to mention it the last time we spoke, but I saw you at the funeral.”

 

“Did you expect me not to go?” Bucky asked.  “I know you think that either my negligence led to Steve’s body being stolen or I took him myself, but it was his  _ funeral _ .”

 

“I expected you to be there,” Wilson answered.  “And I’m thinking that less and less.”

 

“Doctor Barnes,” one of the newer attendants interrupted.  He still sounded completely deferential to Bucky, so he must have been new.  “The fire department says they’ll send a truck over in about fifteen minutes.”

 

“Ok, you stand here and don’t take your eyes off the crime scene, do you hear me? Chain of custody and I’m leaving it in your hands.”

 

He nodded eagerly, and Bucky smiled at him before turning and leaving the scene.  He needed to be away from the noise for a few moments.

 

“Chain of custody?” Wilson asked, once Bucky had stepped far enough away, following him towards the mouth of the alleyway.

 

Bucky shrugged again.  “He’s the one who believed it.  I need to find a bathroom to piss in.”  He then left Wilson behind in the mouth of the alleyway, slipping past all the bystanders and heading down the street to find the place most likely to have a washroom.  It happened to be a Subway location and Bucky happened to buy a sub combo in exchange for using their washroom.

 

Completely coincidentally and all that.

 

Bucky didn’t think it was a sixth sense that made him attuned to Steve’s presence.  Steve could tell him it was because Bucky knew to look for him all he wanted, it didn’t explain why Bucky found himself pulling away from a crime scene when he returned without understanding why until he was across the street in the park and recognised one of the people milling around watching the police mill around waiting for the fire department.

 

“It’s dangerous for you to be here.  You know they regularly photograph bystanders?”  Bucky had tried to be sneaky, but Steve seemed already aware of his presence.

 

“He’s my best friend,” Steve said, looking mournfully at Detective Wilson across the street. Wilson was taking the delay caused by the equipment malfunction to inelegantly shove a burrito in his mouth. Bucky was still holding his wrapped sub and had half-finished his diet coke, so he couldn’t exactly poke fun at that. “We were partners at work, but we became - do you have a best friend?”

 

“Ouch,” Bucky responded, playfully putting a hand over his heart, but secretly wincing at the question.

 

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Steve told him, moving his attention away from Sam and to Bucky, seeing through his mock playfulness and to the insecurity beneath.  “Not to be hurtful.  You seem lonely a lot of the time.  I haven’t seen you talk to anyone other than your sister.”

 

“I’ve had friends.”  It was almost non-committal in tone, but it said a lot.  He had friends, but he didn’t have them currently, not since… “She’s it, now.”

 

“Sometimes you just take to people,” Steve explained, and Bucky nodded along, because he had experienced it.  The last time it happened was with Steve.  “We’d get drinks after closing a big case.  We’d get burgers and watch baseball.  We spent time together - willingly - outside of work.  I miss him.”

 

“I know,” Bucky said, and his throat clicked as he swallowed because he missed Dum Dum and Gabe and Morita and Monty constantly.  Every time he looked at his left arm and really saw it for what it was, he thought about how he’d survived and they hadn’t. “He misses you too.” 

 

“Yeah,” Steve sounded sad. 

 

Bucky took a sip from his drink and adjusted his hat.  Steve was looking at him like he saw more than just the casual movements.  “I felt that way about you,” he said with confidence he didn’t feel because it was easier than explaining it to him.  Sometimes, he was hit with just how lucky he was to have met Steve and that when Steve died, Bucky had been the one on shift.  There were a lot of variables where Steve might not have been standing next to him, being a complete shit by staring blatantly at his best friend.

 

The corner of Steve’s mouth turned up in a small smile.  It wasn’t much of one compared to the way Steve used to look at him, but they were outside and the sun was shining on the dark hood of Steve’s hoodie and he was smiling.  Something deep and dark within Bucky eased the slightest bit.  “I felt that way about you too,” Steve admitted.   Steve looked back at Detective Wilson, watching fondly as he crammed the last bite into his mouth like no one was watching him.  “I should go.  I’ll see you at home.”

 

Bucky watched him walk away.  It took him a moment to recognise the importance of what Steve had just said, too busy fretting over Steve’s refusal to change his walk and whether or not Wilson was looking in their direction.

 

x.x.x.

 

**Steve to Bucky:** I made meat on a stick.

 

**Bucky:** haha fuck off

 

**Steve:** *picture attachment*

 

**Steve:** I’m about to fry them. Home soon?

 

Bucky looked down at all the work he had to do and then back to the picture Steve had sent him.  The meat and vegetables were still raw and it looked infinitely healthier than some of the things Bucky had eaten off a stick, but the thought that Steve was trying made him smile.

 

**Bucky:** Sure.

 

When he entered the house it was to the scent of cooking food, and it was so jarring that he paused.  The time with the stew he’d assumed that Steve had cooked for himself, but this time he knew that Steve had cooked for both of them.  The last time he came home to find food prepared for him his mother had been around.

 

He didn’t tell that to Steve because he wasn’t sure Steve would understand.  He wasn’t comparing Steve to a housewife or his mother, he wasn’t anticipating Steve cooking for him as a regular thing, he was just thrown and touched by having a warm meal waiting for him in a way he hadn’t anticipated.

 

“Hi,” he said, sitting on one of the bar stools in the kitchen as Steve rotated the food in the pan.  

 

“I was inspired,” Steve told him, plating two skewers and putting them in front of Bucky.

 

Bucky grinned at him.  “Morbid,” he pointed out.

 

Steve shrugged.  “I’m dead.  Who else can do gallows humour and get away with it?”

 

“What’s your best joke?” Bucky asked.

 

“What? Now?” Steve looked surprised that he’d asked.  He took a bite from one of his skewers and hummed thoughtfully around the mouthful of food.  “Ok.  What’s a ghost’s favorite ride at the carnival?”

 

Bucky shrugged lightly.  He felt a lot of the stress and worry that had been piling on him ease off a bit at the way Steve grinned at him like he was about to tell the best joke in the history of jokes.

 

“A roller-ghoster,” Steve finished, then his smile grew sharper as Bucky groaned, like the real joke was getting Bucky to play along with his dumb joke.

 

“Seriously?” Bucky asked.  

 

“Do better,” Steve dared with a quirk of his eyebrow.

 

“I grew up in this house.  Do you really think I don’t have some jokes up my sleeve?”  Bucky really didn’t.

 

“Well?” Steve was looking at him expectantly, and then when he realized Bucky had nothing, he smirked and pressed his leg against Bucky’s, still looking like he won something as he took another bite of food.  He stayed where he was against Bucky's side as they ate.

 

X.x.x.

 

Steve opened his eyes.  He was breathing hard and the crackle of energy was still a present echo in Bucky’s ears with every breath Steve took.  Blue eyes looked at him, dragging over Bucky in a blatantly heated look.  “I feel...” Steve said without prompting, not taking his eyes off Bucky.  “Powerful.”  

 

The corner of Bucky’s mouth turned up.

 

“Pun aside,” Steve acknowledged, smiling.  “I can feel it in me.”  He stared at Bucky from under his eyelashes, watching as Bucky unhooked him and checked his skin for burns.  His every movement was graceful and sinuous, breathing growing shallow when Bucky’s fingertips brushed his skin.  “It’s like a livewire inside me.  My body is so aware and sensitive.  You should feel it.”

 

“I don’t think I could survive being electrocuted.”

 

Steve’s grin turned wicked.  “Maybe not, Doctor Barnes,” he said, tilting his head for Bucky in a way that still allowed him to meet Bucky’s eyes.  Steve watching was a change in and of itself, but his behaviour was such a stark difference from usual that Bucky was getting concerned.  “But I didn’t say anything about electrocution.”

 

Bucky’s fingers stilled.  “Steve,” he said, meeting Steve’s eyes.  Eye contact was jarring, almost more surprising than the flirting.  Bucky couldn’t help but lick his lips as his thumb brushed against Steve’s neck.  Instead of continuing, he took a step back.  “Let me finish quickly,” he said, almost by rote, even though Steve knew the process by now as he grabbed the stethoscope and moved back towards Steve, trying to avoid looking at his body, especially the way Steve was aroused, thick and proud, with no effort to hide. 

 

It was an effect of the procedure, Bucky reminded himself.  It happened every time, and both of them took pains not to call attention to it.  Steve’s body language was what was different.  He was almost languid in the chair, looking at Bucky like he wanted to consume him.

 

Or be consumed.

 

“There doesn’t seem to be any difference from last time,” Bucky said with a frown, once he was finished listening to Steve’s chest.  It was a very nice chest.  Bucky did notice these things, but had been trying not to since bringing Steve back.  “What feels different?”

 

“It feels the same,” Steve said.  “It’s always like this.  Like that charge of arousal under your skin when you really need to get off.  I’m what feels different.  I’ve been thinking about you that way again.”

 

He said all that in a matter-of-fact tone, like he wasn’t running his hand down his chest and over his stomach and to…

 

Bucky inhaled and took a step back once Steve got to his dick. 

 

“I don’t want to avoid it this time.”

 

“Well,” Bucky said, taking another step back.  “If that’s what you want.  I’ll leave you to...” he gestured vaguely.

 

“Bucky,” he said, in a surprisingly cajoling tone considering it was Steve, and Steve was one of the least cajoling people Bucky had ever met.  “You can stay.  Watch. Participate if you want.  For science,” he said with a cheeky grin.  Bucky kept his eyes on Steve’s face, but that didn’t prevent him from being aware of what Steve was doing.

 

“I think,” Bucky answered him in a shaky voice, “that I’d rather hear that from you when you’re not running high off a charge, especially considering you just started being civil with me.”

 

The smirk on Steve’s mouth softened a little at that, which was nice to see because it meant he was still aware of his own choices and Bucky’s ability to choose on some level.  “Fine,” he answered, pouting out his bottom lip as he slouched into a more comfortable pose in the chair.  Bucky was trying his best not to…

 

Well, give into the millions of temptations Steve was presenting him with.  “Yeah,” Bucky breathed, and he wasn’t sure what he was agreeing to.  For the first time since they started this, Bucky was the one to turn to leave as soon as possible.

 

It wasn't running away.  It wasn't.  It sure did feel like it, though.


	9. Chapter 9

Steve paused in the kitchen doorway when he saw Bucky, color high in his cheeks.  Then he forced himself forward, sitting at the table across from him, palpably embarrassed, but pressing onward out of stubbornness.  “Thanks,” he muttered.  “For walking away.”

 

Bucky shrugged and finished off his mug of coffee, not really sure what to say.  “You’re welcome.  My particular brand of asshole doesn’t extend to taking advantage of someone like that.”

 

The blush spread down Steve’s neck.  “It would be ok if you did next time.”  He looked up and met Bucky’s eyes and held them, because Steve was a risk-taker.  When he was alive would have kept walking up to Bucky with offerings off coffee until he asked Bucky out, and Bucky would have said yes.

 

“Let me know if you still feel that way next week.”

 

Steve nodded.  “I feel…” his lips turned up in a self-deprecating smirk.  “Embarrassed.  But not very regretful.”

 

Right.  Well.  That was good, wasn’t it?  Bucky found himself nodding, wishing Steve didn’t want to have profound conversations this early in the morning.  He’d probably fully realize what it was Steve was offering while standing over a dead body and get an awkwardly timed boner. That's how rumors got started.  “Good,” Bucky heard himself say as he stood and put his mug in the dishwasher.  When he turned, Steve was looming behind him.  It made him jump because he wasn’t expecting it, hadn’t heard him move at all.

 

Steve leaned in and pressed a kiss against the corner of Bucky’s mouth.  “I’ll see you later,” he said.

 

Bucky was half-way to work, his heart still beating quickly from the surprise of Steve in his space - moving like an apex predator and using it for surprise kisses - when he realized he should be suspicious.  Concerned, maybe, at the possibility Steve was trying to distract him from something.

 

He dismissed the thought almost as soon as he had it, but something niggled in the back of his mind, and he wasn’t sure what it was.  It was like a flashing marquee arrow that said NOTICE ME pointing directly towards a question mark.

 

x.x.x.

 

Bucky was making notes while standing over a body in front of a laundromat, waiting for one of his assistants to join him so they could collect as many skull fragments and brain matter as possible to get back to the morgue.  It wasn’t his job to act like a detective, but he was observing the scene with a critical eye, wondering what could hit a man with that much force to split his head open on the concrete.  He’d been doing this for a long time, and the fact that it was the ground itself that had split the man’s skull open was… concerning.

 

Especially since there didn’t seem to be any other damage to the body that would account for the amount of force it would take to do that.

 

He looked up from his musings to find Steve’s old partner watching him, and he did his best to meet the man’s eyes without looking too guilty, considered caught glimpses of said partner’s dick the night before.  And he couldn't even use it in conversation if Wilson got annoying unless he wanted to be arrested on the spot.  “Detective Wilson,” he said in greeting.  “Another open case?”

 

“It’s gotten to be a trend,” Wilson answered him, accepting a pair of gloves before he walked over and crouched.  Bucky appreciated that he didn’t recoil from the sight.  “Looks like someone split his head open with a tire iron.”

 

Bucky looked up at the detective.  “No.  I’ll know more once I can do an examination, but there’s slight bruising around the mouth.  If I didn’t know any better, I’d say someone held him down like this,” he said, illustrating by hovering his hand over the body’s face.  “Then they bashed his head in against the asphalt.”

 

Wilson looked skeptical. 

 

_I saw your best friend naked_ , Bucky thought. 

 

“I know,” Bucky answered.  “It’s physically impossible.  Maybe your victim had some kind of degenerative bone loss that would account for the way his skull cracked open like an overly ripe melon, but there’d be more signs. It would have to be in late stages to explain this type of damage but the rest of him seems healthy.  I’ll know more once I can run some tests.”

 

Wilson nodded.  “Get me what you can. You’re very good at your job, Doctor,” he observed.  “Everyone I spoke to said the same thing.  You’re a skilled forensic pathologist.”

 

“As you’ve reminded me, they have more than that to say about me.”  Bucky stood and took a step back to let the rest of his team access to the body for transfer.  

 

“Right now, this is what matters,” Wilson said, standing and wiping off his pant leg. “Steve was convinced this guy was the ringleader of a human trafficking ring but could never get charges to stick.”

 

“Steve was convinced…” he echoed back, and suddenly  _ saw _ .

 

NOTICE ME the arrow said.

 

A sense of disquiet settled in Bucky as he watched the body being carefully lifted into the body bag for transfer.  There was a tingling up his spine, an awareness of danger and fear as he looked at the body and understood what was able to exert that much force per inch.  He shivered, his heart beating quickly, and he needed to get away for a second.

 

He needed to think.

 

He needed for there to be some explanation other than Steve kissing him, walking out the door of Bucky’s house, tracking down one of the criminals he’d never been able to catch, and deliberately murdering the man.  “They’re all connected,” he said, his brain feeling like static as he turned to stare at Wilson, eyes wide with shock.

 

There was a serial killer in Brooklyn.  Bucky was having a hard time convincing himself it wasn’t Steve.

 

“I know,” Wilson murmured, commiserating.  “It’s bothering me too.”

 

x.x.x.

 

**Bucky to Steve:** You’re not killing people, are you?

 

**Steve:** ???

 

**Bucky:** That would be bad.

 

**Steve:** What people?

 

x.x.x.

 

Bucky noticed that wasn't a no.

 

x.x.x.

 

“Barnes,” Wilson said in surprise, staring up at him from his chair.  The open floorplan of the bullpen meant that his desk was front to front with someone else’s desk, and the way Sam was studiously avoiding looking in that direction told Bucky everything he needed to know.  He could picture Steve sitting across from his partner, both of them finishing up paperwork and half paying attention to a conversation where they were making plans for later.

 

“Our server access is down,” Bucky told him, dropping the folder of results on Wilson’s desk.  “So you get a special hand delivery.”

 

“You should give this to the lead detective first.”  Despite his words, Wilson was already reading through Bucky’s results.  Results that basically said “blunt force trauma caused by blunt object. Results from debris in wound congruent with samples taken from asphalt beneath the body.”

 

“Already did,” Bucky said, sitting at Wilson’s desk and grabbing a candy from the bowl his new partner kept at the corner of his desk.

 

“I really wouldn’t eat that,” Wilson told him without looking up from reading the file.  “You don’t know where it’s been,” he continued meaningfully.

 

Bucky sighed and dropped the candy back in the bowl.  

 

“I have sunflower seeds in the top drawer if you’re hungry.”

 

“It’s practically birdfeed,” Bucky griped, but still dug through the drawer to find them.  At least they were already hulled.

 

Sam looked up from the file, startled.  

 

“What?” Bucky asked, crunching the seed between his front teeth.  

 

He pinched the bridge of his nose.  “You remind me of him sometimes, that’s all.  He said the same thing.”

 

Bucky popped another few seeds in his mouth.  “I never met that version of him.”

 

“I know,” Wilson answered, “but he met that version of you.  Remember? That day with the commissioner.  The man was taking bribes from the cartel, everyone was uneasy, and then you completely destroyed that kid.  I’ve never heard him reminisce about someone like that, all goofy grins and wistful sighs - of course, it was about 15 minutes after you left the scene and we were driving away, so it wasn’t like I hadn’t been there.  Like I just hadn’t witnessed the same thing he did, only definitely not the same way he did.”

 

Who needed to hear Steve reminiscing about him when he could listen to Sam reminiscing about Steve reminiscing about him.

 

Bucky grinned, fond at the memory.  He didn’t know what to say when Wilson compared him to Steve, like he was thinking they would have been a good match in retrospect and he was grieving for what Steve had missed out on.  It was difficult since Bucky knew exactly how Steve felt about him.

 

It wasn’t hatred, at least, but it was incredibly complicated.

 

“Sorry,” Wilson continued. “I know it’s stupid.”

 

“It’s not stupid.  I like hearing about him, I just don’t know what to say. In a way I’m glad that the feeling was mutual between us, but it doesn’t make anything easier.”

 

“He wouldn’t have wanted this,” Wilson said with regret, staring down at the file.  “He was dedicated to finding justice.  We were all frustrated with the case, but Steve believed that with hard work he could make a difference. He had faith in himself and in the system.  I wonder what he’d think about this… senseless killing.”

 

Bucky felt that sensation of wrongness creeping up his spine again, and he pushed the thought away ruthlessly.  Steve Rogers had been a good man and a good cop.  Steve Rogers was still a good man, but Bucky wondered where he stood on absolutes and morality.  There was no doubt in Bucky’s mind that if Steve was righting the wrongs he’d seen while he’d been alive that Sam Wilson would figure it out sooner rather than later.

 

He just hoped he was wrong.  He was basing his conclusion off what? A feeling? 

 

It figured that the first time Wilson treated him like someone capable of missing Steve’s innate goodness was while looking over evidence that Steve might no longer be that person.  The man’s death could be on Bucky’s hands, after years of deliberately setting a path as far away from the Barnes legacy as he could get.  Bucky had never deliberately taken a life, he’d aimed to restore it.  “I think Steve would find a way to bring whoever did this to justice.”

 

Wilson looked sad as he closed the file.  “Yeah,” he agreed.  “That son of a bitch.”

 

Yeah, that son of a bitch.

 

x.x.x.

 

**Bucky:** what’s with Sam’s sunflower seeds?  Does he go feed birds in the park during his lunch hour?

 

**Steve:** Right?

 

**Steve:** I swear he does but I never found proof.

 

**Bucky:** you stalk your friends?

 

**Steve:** ok Mr. shows-up-in-coffee-shop-right-before-my-shift-for-a-whole-week. I didn’t stalk him, I just kept asking him if he wanted to get lunch and he kept saying yes like he didn’t have plans.

 

**Bucky:** I didn’t know the two of you dated.

 

**Steve:** *middle finger emoticon*

 

**Steve:** *pie emoticon*

 

x.x.x.

 

“You’re home!” Steve said, poking his head around the corner of the doorway leading to the kitchen and grinning at Bucky.  “I had a craving for my mom’s cherry pie.  I don’t have her cookbook anymore, but I remembered enough about it that I was able to find a good match on Google.”

 

Bucky paused in motion at the scent and the sight of Steve looking happy to see him.  All the questions he’d prepared slipped from his mind at the incongruence of Steve going out to do a justice killing and then returning to bake pie.  

 

Bucky finished hanging up his windbreaker, deeply inhaling the scent as baked pie crust and the sweet fragrance of the filling.  There was something rejuvenating about it.  He followed the sound of Steve’s explanation into the kitchen, finding Steve standing there with dark stains on his fingertips that were so symbolic that it was almost like he was begging Bucky to ask him.

 

“Pie?” Bucky questioned, grinning as Steve dished some out for him.  “That explains the weird pie emoticon you sent me.  I should eat supper first.”

 

“Eat supper after,” Steve told him, raising his eyebrows in that way he thought looked flirtatious.  “Be an adult and have your dessert first.”

 

Bucky hummed in agreement, taking a risk and leaning in to kiss Steve.  Steve responded by dropping the spatula in his hand and pulling Bucky in closer.  He was smiling when Bucky ended the kiss, and playfully pressed his mouth against the tip of Bucky’s nose, looking like he found Bucky adorable.  

 

“Was that supper or dessert?”  Steve questioned.  

 

“Either way I want more,” Bucky told him, feeling jubilant.  It was foolish for him to think Steve could brutally murder someone, not when he was grinning and flirting and getting his life back.  Not when he was starting to forgive.

 

Steve snorted in laughter, but he seemed charmed and a little bashful.  He looked like he had in the cafe a month before, flirting and happy and alive.  “Eat your pie first,” he said, shoving a bowl into Bucky’s hand.

 

Bucky felt his worries ease away as he watched Steve eat a bite of pie and look thoughtful.  “I think there’s too much sugar - compared to mom’s, I mean.  I might like it better.  Is that a betrayal?”

 

“I’m not sure.  My mom was a shit cook.”

 

“Oh, mine too!” Steve answered him.  “But she did a few things well.  It was mostly meat and potatoes for me growing up.  She was a nurse and single mother, and those 12 hour shifts didn’t leave much time for meals.”

 

“Mine was…” Bucky hesitated, surprised at Steve opening up and wanting to do the same.  “She was too kind for the type of man my father was.  My sister takes after her.”  And Bucky would forever wonder if she was one of the bodies beneath his lab.  Metaphorically.  The concrete floor had been installed long before she’d left their family, but if his father had taught him anything, it was how easy it was to pretend people had disappeared.

 

Steve paused to look at him and their eyes met.  “What type of man was your father?”

 

“Entitled.  He enjoyed taking things because he knew he could.  Sadistic, because what he enjoyed taking the most was people’s lives.  He was a killer who dressed it up as being for the betterment of surgical practices, as though saving certain lives mattered more than the ones he took.  The lab in the basement is a family legacy.  It's where he used to bring his victims before experimenting on them.”

 

Once, he’d worried about Steve learning the truth.  He’d never pictured sitting in the kitchen and telling him himself.

 

Steve dropped his spoon.  It clattered against the side of his bowl and he looked shaken and nauseated.  “You were scared of him,” he remembered.

 

“Long before he disappeared,” Bucky agreed, like it cost him nothing to admit it.  And maybe it didn’t, because it was easy to say things like that to Steve.  He wanted Steve to know even the dark parts of him. 

 

Steve already knew some of them.

 

And Bucky paused on his second bite and put together the dots.  The first time Steve cooked for him was right after a massacre that no one had been able to explain.  The second had been the skewers.  It had seemed so tongue-in-cheek funny at the time, and had gone a long way towards repairing things between them.

 

The only reason why Bucky was looking at Steve now was because of Sam's involvement in the case and Bucky could see the personal connection to Steve.  He thought of the list of things Steve wanted and how closure was on the top of it.  He didn’t fool himself into thinking Steve had anything in his life that needed closure besides his cold cases.

 

He made a decision.  

 

“You did good work today,” Bucky told him.

 

Steve stilled, meeting Bucky’s eyes without looking away.  They stared at each other for a moment, and Bucky wasn’t sure if it was a stalemate or an assessment.  “It was a productive day,” Steve answered neutrally.

 

“It’s good pie,” Bucky agreed.

 

Steve opened his mouth to say something else.

 

“Christ,” Bucky said, dropping his spoon and dragging Steve towards him, kissing him again. The moment their lips met it felt like the right decision. Steve was warm and unsure against him, so Bucky turned the hood strings from Steve’s hoodie around his fingers, using it to draw Steve in and keep him there.  It was a simple hold to break but Steve moved easily with it, leaning into him and putting his hands in Bucky’s back pockets in order to pull Bucky’s lower half against him.

 

Bucky wasn’t hard yet, and for that matter neither was Steve, but that move made him think they were well on their way to getting there.  “The things I want to do with you,” Bucky muttered, biting at the delicate skin on the hinge of Steve’s jaw.  “You’re so gorgeous and vibrant and alive.”

 

“Wait,” Steve said, pulling away slightly, but his hands were still in the back pockets of Bucky’s pants, so Bucky didn’t think he was trying to stop what they were doing entirely.

 

“What?” he asked, letting go of the hoodie strings in his hands.  Steve stayed where he was, looking at Bucky with concern.

 

“I killed them.  The people who killed me.  I remembered what happened and I was worried about Sam, but then it felt… it felt like a purpose, like I was myself again.  So I kept --”

 

“I know,” Bucky interrupted, stealing another kiss.  “Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out--”

 

“But you’re scared of your father,” Steve said, pulling away from him entirely and then put the kitchen island between them.   “He’s been out of the country for more than a decade, and you’re still scared of him returning.”

 

“He’s dead,” Bucky said in blunt terms. “I know where my father is,” Bucky told Steve, elbows braced against the counter.  “His bones are mouldering among the remains of 27 of his victims’.”

 

Steve cocked his head to stare at him, and it was a penetrating investigative look.  “So he’s not missing?”

 

“Depends on how you define missing,” Bucky answered in a casual off-hand tone.  “Becca and I know where he is.  When she was 16 she realized he was finding his victims from the volunteer work she was doing at a youth hostel and she threatened to expose him.  He took it as well as could be expected.”

 

“He threatened her back?”

 

“Threatened?” Bucky snorted. “He didn’t bother with those kind of pleasantries.  I found her in the lab in the basement - I wasn’t supposed to be home, but I left one of my medical textbook down there. I knew what he was doing. I found it all so fascinating.”

 

Steve frowned at him, reaching out and placing his hand over Bucky’s arm.

 

“She was strapped to the table and I… I did what I had to.”

 

“You killed him.”

 

“I made the choice between my sister and my father.  He was a shitty excuse for a father, and an awful person. So,” Bucky continued, shrugging.  “I’ve made this choice before.  Don’t hurt my sister and I don’t give a fuck who you kill.”

 

Steve continued frowning at him.  “I’m not killing random people.  It’s not the same.”

 

“No?” Bucky questioned with a sardonic raise of an eyebrow.  “Isn’t it?  What’s your body count up to now?  15?  He thought every single one of his victims deserved to die too.”

 

He knew his words hit home when Steve paled and looked completely shaken. Steve understood Bucky’s point because Steve had a moral compass, even if he’d lost his frame of reference for what direction it was pointing in.  There wasn’t evil in Steve’s heart the way there had been in Bucky’s father's.

 

“It’s ok,” Bucky said.  “You’re similar, but you’re not the same.  I'm not scared of you, and I’m glad for it.  I’m aware you’re dangerous and you might even be dangerous to me, but Ibelieve in you.  I believe you would rather turn yourself in than kill someone innocent.”

 

"I wouldn't."  Steve sounded so sincere.  "I wouldn't hurt you.  I would only kill someone like your father.  If he was still alive..."

 

"Steve," Bucky cut him off.  "I never needed saving, but I appreciate the thought.  I don't need your justification either.  Things aren't going to change, that's what I'm trying to convey."

 

“Can I show you my files?” Steve asked, and he sounded small.  He sounded like he wasn’t sure he’d be able to continue his murder spree.  Bucky hadn’t intended that as his point.  He wasn’t sure what he intended, and really he should learn to think out the consequences of his actions.  In truth, Steve had been more himself in the last few weeks, and they felt back on track.  Bucky might let him kill every criminal in Brooklyn if it meant Steve looked at him with soft eyes and kept kissing him.

 

But then Bucky had never felt like he had much of a moral compass.  “Sure,” he told Steve, straightening and giving Steve the universal gesture for ‘lead the way.’

 

x.x.x.

 

Steve’s files were incomplete at best.  He’d wrote down a lot of details from memory, printed out so many news articles that Bucky would probably have to make the decision between buying ink or buying a new printer soon, and he’d taken a few photographs with his cell phone that told Bucky his days were spent investigating on the streets.

 

He’d told Bucky he was aiming for a dirty cop next, and Bucky felt dread in his gut at the danger, but then Steve had kissed him softly, like he was pleased to no longer be keeping everything a secret, and Bucky had leaned into it, desperate and yearning for the closeness.  He didn’t think Steve had a single manipulative bone in his body, especially when it came to romance, so it was hard to think Steve was trying to sway Bucky’s mind with the action.

 

Which meant Steve kissed him because he wanted to, and in a small way that was almost more terrifying to Bucky than the idea of Steve stalking a police officer - especially a dirty one - was.  Bucky wasn’t used to dealing with emotions.  Steve hating him had hurt, but Bucky felt like it was what he deserved.

 

_ Steve liking him? _ It terrified Bucky down to his core.


	10. Chapter 10

Steve tugged at his shirt off, giving Bucky a look like he had intentions with the stripping that had very little to do with getting in the chair. Bucky was proved correct in very short order. “Come here,” Steve said, grabbing Bucky’s sleeve and pulling at it.  Bucky knew it was supposed to be a sexy move, but he was wearing an old pair of scrubs from his residency days and the seam gave before he did.

 

Steve’s eyes went wide as the sleeve came off in his hand.  He looked at Bucky with shock and dismay, as though it was a Big Deal.

 

“It’s ok,” Bucky assured him, taking a step forward and running his hand up down Steve’s arm to get him to let go of the cloth.  Then he moved forward into Steve’s space and kissed him.  Steve's lips were slightly chapped and he tasted vaguely of chapstick and iron.

 

Steve got with the program and pushed Bucky backwards.  He fell into the chair, jarred for a moment by the landing as Steve paused to look down at him before pushing down his pants and climbing into his lap entirely naked.  He then kissed Bucky without saying anything, pressing into him with desperation and want.  Steve's bare skin felt warm to the touch and Bucky yielded entirely, gripping Steve by the waist and surging up towards him.

 

Steve made a soft sound of contentment, his mouth moving against Bucky’s lips and easily moving his body against him.  He felt warm and pliant in Bucky’s arms, like he would move any way that he needed to in order to continue what they were doing.

 

Bucky felt overdressed in his clothing against Steve’s bare skin and he put his arms fully around him, gripping his plush ass with his right hand while his left rested in the middle of Steve's back.  He could feel the puckered scar running along his back, still healing and another one of those signs Steve was still alive.  He squeezed Steve's ass again, grinning into his mouth as Steve pushed back against his hand.

 

“Finally,” Steve said with one of those devastating smirks before kissing Bucky again, filthy and intent on getting Bucky as naked as he was.  Bucky lifted his arms to accommodate Steve pulling off his shirt, and he moved to taste the hollow of Steve throat as Steve worked on his pants.  He was like a live-wire, electric and tasting faintly of ozone, and Bucky wondered how much more potent it would be after a full charge.

 

His fingers dug into Steve’s ass, feeling the way his tight ass muscles flexed and gave under Bucky’s touch.  He’d leave fingerprint bruises on Steve’s skin, and even after all the markers he’d left on Steve’s body, that would be the ones he looked forward to seeing the most.

 

Bucky shifted his hips to allow Steve to guide off his pants.  Steve’s hands moved quickly, opening them and baring his dick to Steve’s gaze.  Steve licked his lips and kissed Bucky again, resting his forehead against Bucky’s as his hands insistently pushed Bucky’s pants down, getting frustrated as they didn’t move past his thighs.

 

“Okay,” Steve sighed, pulling back slightly.  His knees were pressed against Bucky’s hips, sharp points of pressure that shifted as Steve knelt and then stood, using the moment to divest Bucky of his clothing entirely.  “I brought lube,” he said with a grin, like that was the incentive Bucky needed and he wasn’t entirely on board with the fucking the moment Steve had smirked at him with intent.  It seemed really filthy to have sex in the chair Bucky had used so often to try, and fail, to bring people back to life.  It seemed like coming back full circle, in a way.

 

“Me or you?” Bucky asked, taking in Steve’s body from the distance of a few feet.  It was a sight to behold, all hard muscles and protruding bolts that had Bucky’s hand all over it.  Bucky felt a sense of ownership surge inside him, deep and dark and potent, and in some ways protective.  He’d never hurt his Steve, the man he’d helped shape with his own scalpel.  He might cut into him again, perfect him in some ways, but he’d never do anything to hurt him.  “You’re amazing,” he said, instead of putting that sensation into words.  “You look like nothing I could ever dream up.”

 

Steve frowned at him for a moment.  “Better than, I hope?” he suggested, climbing back onto Bucky’s lap and using his hand to grip Bucky’s cock.  It wasn’t a wet slide, tight with Steve’s dry skin and the minimal precome Bucky was producing.  He was on board with this, with Steve’s everything, but he needed for Steve to keep stroking him for a few minutes before he achieved full hardness.

 

“Right now you look like sex,” Bucky told him.  “Can you…?” he questioned, running his hand down Steve’s chest in order to find his dick.  “Beforehand?”

 

“I’m not completely depleted,” Steve told him.  His eyes went dark.  "I've been gaining experience in this."

 

 "Yeah?" Bucky asked, and he could picture it.  Steve alone in his room, stroking himself as he thought of his revenge fantasies and Bucky, hopefully not in that order.   "What do you think of?"

 

Steve handed Bucky the packet of lube, kneeling over him with his thighs braced, the muscles tensed. The view was enchanting.  It took Bucky a moment to realize what Steve wanted.  "It's been a while since I've done this," Bucky told him, slicking up his fingers.  Some of the lube spilled on his lap, but that was the opposite of a concern.  "I know the general mechanics, but you'll let me know if it doesn't feel great?"

 

"Sure," Steve promised, allowing Bucky to explore his ass with probing fingers.  He was a lot more patient for the tentative slide of Bucky's index finger into him than Bucky would have been in his place.  He waited until Bucky felt more sure of what he was doing before making demands.  "Another."

 

Bucky gripped Steve's hip with his free hand and gave him what he wanted until he leaned forward and grabbed a condom from Bucky's medical tray.  Even that seemed filthy after all the medical instruments he'd kept on there.

 

Steve pinched the tip of the condom and rolled it down Bucky’s dick, quick and competent like it was a skill he’d perfected a long time ago.  Bucky dragged his fingers out of his ass reluctantly, missing the warmth of Steve clenching around him, shifting his hips impatiently.  As good as it felt on his fingers - mostly from the implication and the sheer amazingly hotness of the motion - Bucky knew Steve would be amazing at this.  Steve seemed to be someone who enjoyed riding dick.  “You love this,” he observed out loud.

 

“I do.”  Steve moved, one hand bracing on Bucky’s shoulder, not as much for leverage as it was a guiding force.  “I’ve always loved this,” he told Bucky, his thighs flexing as he shifted his center of gravity, moving so he could settle over Bucky, balanced as he moved down on to his cock millimeter by millimeter.

 

It was like being engulfed, the heat of Steve settling over him.  Bucky could feel the sweat rolling down the nape of his neck as Steve bottomed out, his ass settling on the top of Bucky’s thighs.  Steve sighed, his mouth moving up the line of Bucky’s jaw.  He was breathing heavily, his nose pressed against Bucky’s temple as he moved upwards fractionally before slamming down.

 

Bucky breathed through his nose, meaning for it to be an ironic snort at the **understatement** of ‘I’ve always loved this’ as Steve started riding his cock in earnest.  It came out sounding more like a whine, giving in entirely to the feeling of Steve.  

 

Eventually, when Steve came, his eyelashes shuttered closed with pleasure as he exhaled, a smile on his lips.  It was one of the most beautiful sights Bucky had ever witnessed.  He continued moving his hips in tight circles until Bucky followed him over the edge, pressing his eyes against Steve’s collarbone with his mouth against his skin, open but not biting.

 

Steve laughed, his lips against Bucky’s temple.  “That was fun,” he said, stroking his hands against Bucky’s sides as he allowed himself a moment to float with the pleasure.  “I like your dick.”

 

“Thanks,” Bucky said in a sardonic tone, resting his head against the back of the chair.  “You sure do know how to show your appreciation.”

 

“When I’m interested in someone I like to picture what they’ll be like,” Steve confided.  “You’re larger than you seem.”

 

“Flatterer, I’m little more than average.”

 

Steve hummed, straightening sideways in the chair so he was practically draped across Bucky’s lap with his head against his shoulder.  It was disarming how cuddly he seemed to be after a good fuck, and Bucky stored the info away for later.  “Yeah, but you don’t move like someone concerned about the placement of their dick in their pants.”

 

“What does that mean?” Bucky questioned.

 

“It means for a professional your pants are usually slim fitting, and you crouch too easily for me not to wonder.”

 

Bucky wasn’t sure if he should be flattered Steve had looked, considering he hadn’t knelt in front of him much, if at all, since the first incident they met up the point where Steve ended up in Bucky’s morgue.  Really, it might have only been that first time at the crime scene when Bucky had looked up and became enchanted by Steve’s sardonic amusement at Bucky’s wit. 

 

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Steve informed him.  “I don’t care much, so long as you’re willing to put it in me when that’s what I want.  The real question is whether you care?”

 

“That you assumed I had a small dick based on the one time you saw me kneel over a body?”

 

“No,” Steve answered, and even though his face was mostly tilted away from Bucky, he could still feel the amusement.  “About whether or not I’m considered dead.”

 

“NO! Shut the fuck up,” Bucky said, half groaning but half legitimately insulted.  “He was being a dick.  They’re all being dicks about the fact that I’m young and - in their words, not mine - attractive and always single. Like there has to be a reason for it.  I don't find it funny.”

  

“No,” Steve said, sliding off Bucky’s lap.  “It’s really not.  Sorry.  My humour gets inappropriate when I’m stressed or tired, and I’m feeling pretty sluggish right now.  I think it’s time.”

 

Bucky looked up at him and it took him a moment to parse what Steve was saying.  “Oh,” he said, standing and allowing Steve access to the chair.  “Right.”

 

Steve sat in the chair.  He was speckled his his own come, but not as much as was smeared over Bucky’s midsection if he took the time to look and feel for it.  It was drying on him, something he was aware of on the periphery as he took the time to hook Steve up to the chair.  It went from being a plush leather chair good for fucking on to something more sinister.

 

Or, it was always sinister, but the context of what they were doing in it changed.

 

Or maybe it was always a really fucking dark place for them to first have sex.

 

Bucky took a step back once he finished with the wires, idly scratching at his stomach and smearing the mess worse, getting a good layer on his fingertips.  

 

He shared one last meaningful gaze with Steve, the other man looking like he was considering tugging Bucky back into the chair once this was over and riding out the storm.  The thought of it was powerful, but the reality was Bucky didn’t think he could get it up again so soon after the last time.  Maybe he’d go down on Steve instead, tasting the buzz of all that electric charge on his tongue.  

 

Bucky bent over and grabbed his protective goggles, leaving the rest of his clothing in a pile on the floor next to Steve’s.  “Ready?” he asked, before pulling the switch.

 

x.x.x.

 

**Bucky:** I would kill for coffee.

 

**Steve:** har har

 

**Steve:** Nice to know where you draw the line. I probably should have guessed.

 

**Steve:** I want to kiss you again.

 

**Bucky:** you can kiss me whenever you want.

 

**Steve:** I want to get on my knees and blow you later too.

 

What? Bucky jolted, dropping his phone on his desk.  It landed, muffled by all the papers underneath it.  He stared at it for a moment, reluctant to touch it. He could picture it easily, would absolutely enjoy the feel of Steve’s mouth on him, the sweet suction of his lips and the roll of his tongue.  He didn’t know what kind of blow job Steve would give, and he imagined with his straightforward personality it would be methodical, but Steve was also a sarcastic asshole, so it probably wouldn’t be too methodical.

 

And now Bucky was getting turned facing pictures of a crime scene. 

 

**Bucky:** ok.

 

**Steve:** That took you a while. Shy or picturing it?

 

**Bucky:** busy.

 

**Steve:** That’s ok, I’m awful at dirty talk. I’m better at action.

 

**Bucky:** I bet you are.

 

x.x.x.

 

“Hey,” Steve said in a casual tone, as though he wasn’t standing in the doorway to the morgue while one of the attendants washed down a recently-used table.  He was wearing one of the hoodies that hid the bolt in his neck, but his confidence at not being recognized was verging on recklessness.  

 

He was holding a coffee in his hand that he was wordlessly offering to Bucky, though, so Bucky was happy to see him.  Bucky would have been happy to see Steve without the coffee, but the coffee was a personalized gift that made the pleasure centers in his brain that responded to romantic gestures also happy to see Steve.

 

“I thought you bought a new coffee pot?” He asked, not bothering to hide his amusement as Bucky drank half of it in one breath.

 

“Someone decided it was ok to heat their soup in it.  I guess they did it all the time with the old one.”  Bucky made a face at him, swaying closer so that he could feel Steve’s solidness.

 

The corner of Steve’s mouth quirked up as he watched Bucky drink.  “I think you have more dependency on caffeine than I do on electricity,” he noted, giving Bucky a fond look before his fingers curled gently into the front of Bucky’s lab coat and he pulled him in for a kiss.  

 

“If I went any longer I would have been put in the position of finding out,” Bucky said, leaning against Steve as he took another sip, relishing the feeling of Steve’s attention on him.  “How has your case been progressing?”

 

And that’s what it was.  Steve did his due diligence to make sure someone was guilty before he murdered them.  He was a conscientious serial killer.

 

“It’ll be a few days yet, but I think I’ve almost got him.  I won’t be home til late tonight.  I didn’t want you to worry.”

 

“You could have texted,” Bucky pointed out, aware that the attendant was almost done with the table and would be looking for Bucky in a moment, paying more attention to her surroundings.  He took a step towards the hallway, navigating Steve backwards.  

 

“I could have,” Steve admitted with a smile.  “But then I wouldn’t have seen you.”  He pressed his forehead against Bucky’s for a moment, and then followed through with a kiss so when he said ‘seen’ so Bucky knew what he really meant.

 

“That’s true,” Bucky answered, giving Steve his most charming smile.  “How about tomorrow night we...

 

“I have to go,” Steve interrupted him, abruptly moving down the hallway towards the exit leading out to the parking lot.  His movements were smooth, and it seemed like he was stepping deliberately so that the sound of his footsteps echoed as he moved.

 

For once, he was slouching his shoulders and Bucky frowned after him as he watched Steve leave.

 

“I didn’t know you had a new friend,” Detective Wilson said from the other end of the hallway, and the way he said friend told Bucky he meant something else.  “Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s healthy not to get stuck on a dead guy.”

 

“Yeah,” Bucky replied, because there wasn’t much else to say to that.  “It’s new.”

 

“It makes me miss Steve,” Sam confided.  It was something the detective never would have said to him before the series of investigations they’d been involved in together.  Bucky wondered if Sam would still miss Steve if he knew Steve was the one murdering all Sam’s suspects.

 

“I wonder sometimes where the two of us would be if he hadn’t died,” Bucky offered, because that much was true. “We hadn’t even gone on a date, so it’s impossible to know if we’d be celebrating a month now or if it would have crashed and burned.”  Bucky was acutely aware of the warm cup of coffee in his hands and the lingering taste of Steve’s kiss.  

 

“Yeah,” Sam echoed.  “Moving on is good.  Part of me wishes I could take to my new partner.”

 

Wilson was sharing with him… did that make them more than reluctant coworkers now?  Were they friendly acquaintances?  “Steve was… unique.”

 

Wilson snorted, walking into Bucky’s office without waiting for Bucky to follow. He had files laid out on the desk before Bucky managed to follow him in and close the door.

 

“I have an eye-witness.”

 

Bucky deliberately took a drink of the coffee so Sam wouldn’t be able to see his face.

 

“I need a second pair of eyes on this,” Wilson told him, taking the seat in front of Bucky’s desk and pulling out a folder.  “I don’t want to ask anyone at the precinct. I know what they’ll say and it’s along the lines of how I should have taken the available bereavement leave.”

 

Bucky pulled the folder towards him and opened it.

 

“That’s what a sketch artist came up with after working with the kid for an hour.”

 

It was Steve.  It didn’t just look a lot like him, they’d managed to get the shape of his mouth exact and a pretty good approximation of the way the tip of his nose hooked downwards.  Bucky was pretty sure his description of Steve would have been a lot worse and he was in love with the man.

 

  1. At least Steve wasn’t killing witnesses??



 

  1. Maybe he should be.



 

“From the guy with rebar in his chest?” Bucky asked, taking in the case file name.  “It looks like Steve.”

 

“Right?!” Wilson exclaimed.  “It looks just like him.”

 

Fucking Steve.  Couldn’t keep his hood on while murdering someone. You’d think with all the years he’d been a cop, he’d be way better at not getting caught.  

 

“I…” Bucky hedged.  “It can’t.”

 

Bucky turned to the witness statement and there in print it said “killer said ‘I want you to look into my eyes as I kill you so you understand why and what you did.’ and then he took down his hood.”

 

What a dramatic fucker.  He was so incompetent at this.  Bucky might end up giving Steve pointers on how to get away with murder, because at the rate he was going he’d end up caught by the end of the month.

 

And Bucky had more than 10 years of experience with this shit.  No one even knew his was dead.

 

“I need a drink,” Wilson said, pinching the bridge of his nose and sighing as he took in the sketch again.  “You in?”

 

What?  “You want me to drink with you?” Bucky questioned skeptically.  It was even odder than Wilson stopping by to confide in him.

 

Sam shrugged.  “You know all the details of what I want to bitch about.”

 

There was that.


	11. Chapter 11

**Bucky:** Your BFF is taking me out drinking

 

**Bucky:** I think he’s my BFF now.

 

**Steve:** Treat him kindly and don’t let him have jager.  He gets weepy about birds.

 

**Steve:** I think I’m jealous.

 

**Steve:** Do you guys talk about me?

 

**Bucky:** He’s convinced we were a love match before you died. He gives me sad looks every time your name comes up. You waxed poetics?

 

**Steve:** I ran into a door watching you play with your hair.

 

**Steve:** I wouldn’t let him get coffee with me for 3 days in a row because I was trying to run into you alone.

 

**Bucky:** aww you had a crush on me. That’s awkward

 

**Steve:** shut up and go make friends, you need them.

 

**Steve:** *puke emoticon*

 

**Steve:** if you’re not nice to him i’ll murder you

 

**Steve:** jk

 

Somehow, Bucky doubted that was true.

 

x.x.x.

 

“To Steve,” Wilson proclaimed, downing his shot in one smooth motion and then schooling his face entirely blank in a way that was more telling than a wince.  Bucky had spent his fair share of time drinking shots in undergrad and then in medical school.  He knew the signs of someone who didn’t drink often and who planned to get  _ drunk _ .

 

Most of the time it was him within his friend group.  He wasn't even sure he'd ever met Dum Dum while sober.

 

“To Steve,” Bucky agreed, taking the shot, probably not with any more grace than Wilson had.  It had been a while since medical school and the last time he’d gone to a bar for social drinking.  It had been so long he was completely unprepared for drinking on a patio, like someone who had no idea how alcohol consumption in the middle of a sweltering heat wave in August worked.  Bucky’s work and house had air conditioning, thank you very much. “I think I’m going to get nachos.  You can have some if you want.”

 

“I want to get drunk,” Sam answered, taking another shot and chasing it with his beer.  “I am finished with this week.”

 

“You’ll thank me for them later,” Bucky told him, ordering the plate of nachos and two more rounds of shots.  “If you’re aiming to get drunk, I’m not going to stop you.”

 

“Do you know anything about reanimation?” Wilson questioned.

 

“What?” Bucky asked in a flat tone.  Jesus fuck he was lucky he wasn't mid-drink when Sam asked that or else he'd probably be spraying the table with the contents of his mouth.

 

“Like voodoo zombie shit…” he trailed off, rubbing his hand through his hair.  “I swear I saw him after the second murder. I was leaving the scene and our eyes met.  I put it down to exhaustion but, fuck.  I’m not the only one who saw him.”

 

Fucking Steve.

 

Seriously.  Fucking Steve.

 

“I…” Bucky floundered.  “You saw Steve?”

 

“And the thing is,” Sam continued, looking incredibly frazzled.  “No one knows what happened to his body.  Did he walk out?”

 

“Are you saying  _ you believe _ in reanimation?”

 

“I don’t know what to believe in anymore.  Tell me you’ve seen him.  If he had unfinished business it was probably with…” he trailed off with the look of someone who was suddenly struck by an epiphany.  “Unfinished business."

 

“I think I see him all the time,” Bucky said, deflecting.  The last thing either of them needed was Sam Wilson actually putting things together.  Steve’s best defense was that he was dead and everyone knew it.  “Who else holds their shoulders like that?”

 

“Right?” Wilson answered, clinking the top of his beer bottle against Bucky’s.  “No one, that’s who.  Did you ever see that man run? He was like a fucking gazelle.”

 

“No, Steve never ran away from me.”

 

“No,” Wilson repeated.  “He did not.  He had such a crush on you, man.  I don’t see it.”

 

“I think you’re drunk.”

 

“I thought I just missed him,” Wilson continued mournfully.  “And it turns out all this time he’s been murdering my suspects. How do you kill a ghost?”

 

“I don’t know.  Is  _ Supernatural _ on Netflix?  Maybe we should get pointers.”

 

“Oh fuck off!”

 

“So is he a ghost or is he reanimated?  I'm shaky on my science fiction but I don't think they're the same thing.”

 

“I’m too fucking sober for this shit.  I don’t know.  He’s my best friend.”

 

Bucky squinted at him through his sunglasses and then pushed them on top of his head; the sun was starting to go down so they were no longer day drinking.  “He still is,” Bucky said, and then instantly regretted it.  “I mean, maybe you can be friends with his ghost.”

 

“Christ,” Sam said, taking a long drink of his beer.  “That’s brutal.  I need more shots.  Have you ever had jager?”

 

“No,” Bucky answered, hiding a smile with his beer bottle as he lied through his teeth.  “Is it good?”

 

x.x.x.

 

“Steve I’m stuck!” Bucky yelled, stumbling up the stairs.  “Steve! Are you home?”

 

Steve said he wouldn’t be, so it was a surprise when he emerged from his bedroom and looked down the stairs at Bucky, his white shirt bright in the dim light.  He looked large and not very dangerous, and Bucky started to giggle at the idea that this man had single-handedly killed a whole room full of people like some… 

 

Did superheroes kill people?

 

Like some…

 

Vigilante?  The Punisher, only Steve wasn’t punishing people, he was just killing the ones too good at escaping persecution.  He was the Persecutor.

 

But less like a lawyer and more like a serial killer.  

 

A hot one.

 

One with an actual cause that wasn’t centered around getting a boner from causing people pain. That was the difference between Steve and Bucky’s dad.

 

Wait! Prosecutor? The word was prosecutor.  

 

“Are you drunk?” Steve asked with a laugh.  “I’ve never seen you laugh like that.”

 

“I’m not laughing, I’m drunk,” Bucky said with dignity as he stumbled up the last step and into Steve’s arms.  “You’re hot.”

 

“Thanks.”

 

“The first time I saw you I thought you looked like the sun.  All golden and bright and at the center of everything important.  And you’re still so bright.  I didn’t take that from you.  Death didn’t take that from you.  You have to understand that, Steve.  You’re so bright and my fucking sunglasses are stuck in my hair.”

 

“Ok,” Steve acknowledged, drawing Bucky closer to him.  He managed not to laugh, which was surprising.  Bucky tended to get honest in a gushy way when he was drinking.  He’d tell his coffee maker he loved it and actually mean it.  Telling Steve the same thing wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.

 

Steve’s fingers were gentle in his hair as he picked the strands away from the arm of Bucky’s wayfarers.  Bucky looked fucking fantastic in a pair of sunglasses and he knew it, so it was a shame Steve wasn’t getting the full effect.  “I usually look more attractive in these.”

 

“I’ve seen you in sunglasses before,” Steve reminded him in an amused tone, freeing Bucky’s hair.  He was so careful and methodical untangling the strands, holding Bucky’s head still with his palm so he wouldn’t accidentally tug.  It was disarming knowing those fingers were just as capable of strangling the life out of a person or gripping Bucky’s dick just the right shade of overwhelming.  “Last week you came home, removed them in a completely dramatic fashion, and then stood in the doorway staring at me with this penetrating expression like you could see into my soul.  Or wanted me to take my clothing off.”

 

“I don’t remember,” Bucky admitted.  “I like your clothes off but I was probably just blinded by the light.”

 

“I thought you said I was bright,” Steve teased.  “There you go.”

 

Bucky took his sunglasses back from Steve, holding them in his hand as Steve leaned in and kissed Bucky’s cheek, soft and casual, like it was something they did every night.  “G’night Buck.”

 

“Good night,” Bucky said, sliding his sunglasses back on his face and grinning at Steve.  “Sweet dreams of carnage or whatever.”

 

“I don’t dream of carnage,” Steve informed him, pausing in the doorway of his bedroom to look at Bucky with a serious expression.  It struck Bucky as funny to see him like that next to the vintage yellowing paisley wallpaper one of his ancestors had picked out.  Bucky took just enough money from the family account to cover maintenance.  He might need a good lawyer someday and those things were expensive.  “I dream of a better, safer world.”

 

Bucky looked at him.  “Come on,” he said, tilting sideways as he moved deeper down the hallway towards the door to the attic.  He didn’t go up there much anymore, though it was one of the nicest rooms in the house.  “I want you to meet someone.”

 

Steve didn’t argue, he just followed Bucky up those stairs. The attic featured a long, narrow hallway right out of a horror movie, but it didn’t bother Bucky as much as what laid beyond it.  He knew that behind those walls rested storage in slanted spaces to accommodate the roofing.  He’d grown up in this house, and the attic was one of the least morbid places in it.

 

Bucky took a breath and unlocked the door of the front facing gable, pushing it open to reveal a study.

 

The room smelled like dust and wood polish and the faint scent of sunlight heating the room during the day, baking the curtains until they were faded white. There was a big antique pedestal desk sitting off-center, facing the windows.  Display cases held antique medical equipment, and there were shelves upon shelves of leather-bound hand-written notebooks.

 

“Oh,” Steve breathed, looking around.  “I was wondering what was up here.  I grew up in a small two bedroom apartment, and then moved into a smaller bachelor.  I always wanted to see what spaces like this looked like.”

 

“It’s yours if you want it,” Bucky told him, reaching out and hooking his finger around two of Steve’s so he could pull him over towards one of the book cases.  “It was my dad’s study, and my grandfather’s.  I can’t face being up here for more than a few minutes at a time.”

 

“It’s a great space,” Steve was saying, looking around as Bucky picked up a human skull from the shelf in front of him and cradled it in his hands. He was just drunk enough for this. Steve’s attention focused back on Bucky as he paused for a second before Bucky passed it over to Steve.

 

Steve looked down at the skull in his hands.  “I’ve never seen one of these up close before, except in halloween stores.  It’s lighter than I thought.”

 

“It’s my mother,” Bucky told him, his hands still around Steve’s to stabilize him.  There was a grim satisfaction to the way Steve jolted at the words, the mounting horror on his face as he looked from the skull to Bucky.  “I think?” he continued.  “It’s impossible to know for sure.  She showed up in here about a month after mom left, though, and I eventually put it together.”

 

Steve’s mouth opened but no words came out.  His eyes were locked on Bucky’s face as Bucky gently took the skull and put it back on the shelf.  “I’ve never had the guts to check her dental records, but the medical examiner in me knows that the dental work is congruent with fillings from the 70s and 80s.  There are markers that… it would be a relief to know for sure.”

 

Steve looked around the room with a new light.  “What kind of monster-”

 

Bucky barked out a laugh.  “That’s just it, isn’t it? I know monsters and I know murderers.  I was groomed from childhood to be one, and then one day I opened my eyes and saw my mother on that shelf as I was studying for my MCATs, the sun shining so brightly on the skull that I couldn’t look away.  My father,” Bucky continued in a tight tone. “He was… I,” Bucky swallowed, his fingers shaking as he withdrew his hand from the top of the skull, unable to talk about all of this while still touching her.  “I brought you up here to meet her because I have a favor to ask you, and I want you to understand as much of the context of it as I’m capable of explaining to anyone.”

 

“Ok,” Steve answered, and his hands closed around Bucky’s shaking fingers, holding them close to his chest.

 

“Don’t lose sight of what’s important.  I have shaky morals so I don’t care if you slaughter a bunch of assholes.  I’ll cheer you on if you want, but learn your line and draw it and don’t cross it. There are more important things than finding closure.”

 

“I already know it, Buck,” Steve told him in a soft tone.  His expression was concerned, and he let go of Bucky’s hand for a second to cup his cheek tenderly.  “I know what’s important and who’s important.  I won’t lose sight of it like your father did.”

 

Bucky snorted, laughing ironically as Steve’s hand caressed his face.  “He didn’t lose sight of what was important.  He knew what he was doing - it was just that my mom and Becca weren’t as important to him as his medical breakthroughs.  You’re nothing like my dad.  You’re my mom.  You’re Becca.”  Bucky’s voice broke.  “You’re bright and good and caught up in this world you didn’t ask for.  Don’t let my darkness kill you in the process.”

 

Steve’s face darkened at Bucky’s words.  “Did you ever think that you don’t get to take credit for that?” Steve questioned in a low, angry tone.  “Don’t put this all on yourself.  My choices aren’t a reflection on you.  It’s not your darkness, it’s mine.”

 

Bucky leaned away, but didn’t let go of Steve.  “The truth is that 17 people would still be alive if I hadn’t played god with your body, and I can’t even bring myself to feel bad about it.”

 

“They weren’t good people.”

 

“So what?  Neither am I.  Am I the final person on your list for vengeance?”

 

“You think I’d kill you?”  Steve questioned, letting go of Bucky and stepping away from him, recoiling entirely from the thought to the point where he was recoiling away from Bucky.

 

Bucky scrubbed his hands over his face.  “No.  I don’t know.  I just know that if you did, I’d deserve it.”

 

“Did you ever think that maybe the good in your family tree isn’t just your sister and your mother?”

 

“No,” Bucky answered with honesty.  “They both would have given their lives to stop him from killing more people.  I’ve never given a shit about people.  My line gets drawn right in front of Becca, and now you.”

 

“You told me once that you do what you do so that someone, somewhere down the line would see it as a gift.  I think you’re drunk and feeling sorry for yourself, and you just introduced me to your mother, and that would mess with anyone’s mind.”  Steve pressed a kiss to Bucky’s forehead, his large, deadly hands delicately holding Bucky’s face.  Bucky wasn’t aware that he was crying until Steve’s thumbs wiped the tears away.  "You were raised to be someone else and look what you made of yourself."

 

Steve might genuinely be the only person who thought that.  Becca thought that Bucky had given into the darkness, and his father would see him as a failure.  Bucky didn't know what to do with the praise.   “I don’t know anymore,” Bucky told him in a quiet voice.  “If I ever knew.  She’s been dead for a long time.  There are a lot more of his ideas in me than her’s.  Is goodness learned or is it genetic?”

 

“Come to bed,” Steve said to him, looking sympathetic.  “Let’s get you out of this room.”

 

“It’s ironic, you know.  For all the windows it’s the darkest room in the house.  Evil lives here, Steve.  And I spent so much time soaking it up.”

 

He was grateful for Steve leading him out of the room and tucking him into bed, crawling in next to him and stroking his hand up and down Bucky’s back to sooth him through the floaty, falling feeling of trying to sleep while still a little tipsy.  Bucky was just enough of a masochist that might have slept in the study if Steve hadn’t made sure he left.

 

Bucky woke up with a hangover, the headache pounding in his brain caused just as much by the alcohol as it was by crying.  He rolled over and stared at his ceiling, the dark shadows caused by the sun creeping through the cracks in his curtains playing with the angles of the room.  

 

There was a sense of dawning hope in his mind as he realized that maybe it was time to let go of the past.  He didn't have to be the guy with the dead friends, the dead parents, and the dead surgical dream.  His not-dead boyfriend had shown him that.

 

(his not-dead boyfriend's cop partner helped, but Bucky was reluctant to give credit to Sam for anything after spending 2 hours watching him try to coerce a seagull into eating a nacho from his hand.  Sam getting weepy about birds on jager was a fucking misnomer Steve.  Sam got effulgent about birds and Bucky got weepy about whether or not he was about to catch a communicable disease)


	12. Chapter 12

Steve crawled into bed next to him, fresh from the shower.  His hair looked darker and sticking up in all directions, and Bucky wasn't sure if it was adorable or or goofy looking.  Despite that, Bucky could still smell death on him, and he wondered what horrors he’d be facing in the morgue in the morning.  

 

Bucky’s nose permanently held the scent of decomp and astringent cleanser, so the blood beneath Steve’s nails had to be plentiful for him to be able to smell it.  They were a pair of them: the medical examiner who spent his life with the dead, and the former dead cop who put them there.

 

Bucky grunted when Steve’s elbow dug into his ribs.

 

“Good, you’re awake,” Steve said, wrestling to get the covers out from under his boney ass instead of getting up and moving them.

 

“Was any of that blood yours?” Bucky asked, squinting over at the curve of Steve’s back.  He reached his hand out and ran a finger down Steve’s spine and over his ass.  Steve shivered slightly.

 

“Yeah,” he said, and then slipped beneath the sheets.  He looked at Bucky with unfathomable eyes, his long eyelashes casting deep shadows on his cheekbones.  "But I left the knife in until I got away, so I don't think any got on the crime scene."

 

"Steve," Bucky said, shocked, his hands reaching for Steve to check him over.  T hey looked at each other for a moment.  Steve was smiling.

 

"I'm joking, it's just a scratch," he lifted the blanket and showed Bucky a deep gouge over his right ribs.  "Hardly even bled."

 

Bucky frowned at the wound, poking it with one of his fingers.  Steve was damp from the shower and barely even flinched.

 

“I like being in here with you.  When it’s dark, I remember dying,” Steve told him, curling his limbs around Bucky and settling against him, skin on skin.  “The first time it came back to me was during that first night.  I hated being alone but I hated the idea of admitting the weakness more.”

 

Bucky’s hands settled around Steve’s hips, holding him tightly and possessively.  “I lost my arm in a car accident during my surgical residency.  My father had been dead for a few years and I was starting to feel like a real boy.  I had friends from the program, and we were road tripping north so Gabe could… there was a girl.”  Bucky’s smile was bittersweet.  “When it’s dark, I remember the sound of blood dripping on the roof of the car.  I’ve never gotten the smell of it out of my nose.”

 

Steve opened his mouth to say something, but it turned out that even he could run out of words to say.

 

“We all have our ghosts.  This house collects them.”  It wasn't something Bucky believed but it seemed true nonetheless. 

 

“It’s haunted?” Steve asked, peering over his shoulder to look at the dark corners of Bucky’s room.

 

“No,” he answered with a laugh.  “Well, maybe. I wouldn’t be surprised.”

 

“Why stay?”

 

Bucky shrugged.  It was mostly out of duty.  Some day he’d die and someone would find out about the house after they moved in, but until then he was stuck.  “I don’t know.   I'd rather talk about you all naked and warm and damp from your shower," Bucky said, lifting the corner of the sheet so he could look at Steve beneath the covers. "Blow job?”

 

Steve took the question in stride, turning so he could look at Bucky. “Asking or offering?”

 

“Offering.”

 

“I don’t know,” Steve mused.  “You’ll mess up the blankets.”  Then he laughed when Bucky stared at him in disbelief before getting out of bed to stand at the foot of it so it could pull the blankets right off Steve, exposing him to the room.  Steve shuddered delicately as his skin met the cool air.

 

Bucky’s hands tightened around Steve’s ankles as he spread his legs wide enough so he could settle between them.  Steve moved easily enough, watching Bucky with a small smile on his lips.  Watching, eyes darkening as Bucky knelt on the edge of the bed, crawling up the line of Steve’s long legs with a sinuous movement that had him hardening under Bucky’s gaze. 

 

Bucky leaned in slowly, his lips parted, but at the last minute he bypassed Steve’s cock, instead pressing his mouth to the groove of muscle arrowing down from his hips. Steve’s cock brushed against the underside of Bucky’s chin, warm and foreign-feeling, leaving a smear along the line of it.

 

Bucky would give him something to leak precome over, and he smiled at the thought, allowing his tongue to dart out against Steve’s skin.

 

“Tease,” Steve growled, hands coming up to thread through Bucky’s hair. Bucky grasped Steve by the hips, experiencing a sensory memory from the first time they did this.  The bolt protruding from Steve’s hip, feeding wiring into his leg, was warm against against the palm of Bucky’s hand, and it struck him how cool his metal hand must feel on Steve’s skin in comparison.  

 

“You like it,” Bucky teased in almost a sing-song tone, repeating the phrase from the last time he had Steve naked and willing, Bucky's lips curving as he trailed his mouth slowly down, down, until Steve’s cock, hard and hot, brushed fully against Bucky’s cheek.  The last time he shaved was that morning, and Steve shivered at the sensation of rough against his cock.

 

Steve groaned, his hands tightening in Bucky’s hair. “Fuck. I do. I’ve admitted it, will you stop teasing me and put your gorgeous filthy mouth on my cock?”

 

“Probably.” Bucky looked up from under his lashes, moving to the other side and rubbing his cheek more firmly against Steve’s hard shaft.  “And do what?”

 

“Blow me,” Steve answered, and he sounded so intense that it almost sounded like an insult. His whole body was taut under Bucky’s when he continued. “I want to come in your mouth.  I’ve thought about coming in your mouth from the very first moment I saw you.”

 

“Why do you keep bringing that up while we're in bed?"

 

“You were so… Christ,” he breathed as Bucky ran both his hands down Steve’s thighs at the same time, putting pressure so he could feel it.  “Brutal.  Derisive.”

 

“Derisive. Big word”  Bucky considered drawing it out a little longer, but he’d be punishing himself just as much as Steve. So he wrapped his hand around the base of Steve’s cock and licked over the head, the salty-bitter taste of precome spreading across his tongue.  Once he had Steve’s eyes locked directly on him, Bucky smirked at him around the tip, enjoying the way Steve’s eyes widened in appreciation.  “Let’s see you keep using that vocabulary,” he said, tone slightly sarcastic. It wasn’t about the words so much as it was about the effect, his mouth brushing against the tip of Steve’s cock with each syllable.

 

If Steve liked them sarcastic and a little mean, Bucky could do that for him.  

 

“Fuck,” Steve groaned when Bucky’s tongue circled slowly around the head. “Thought you were gonna stop teasing?”

 

“I said probably,” Bucky replied, forestalling any retort Steve might have made by closing his mouth over the head, sliding as far down as possible before withdrawing to take a breath.  He repeated the process a few times, pressing with his tongue as well as he could without forcing Steve’s cock against his top teeth.

 

He was a little out of practice with the whole blow job thing.  And Steve had a big dick.  It was delightful in theory but complicated things in reality.

 

Despite whatever idealistic fantasies Bucky had been harboring, the science dictated that he couldn’t actually fit all of Steve’s cock into his mouth. Steve didn’t seem to mind Bucky’s disinclination to test his gag reflex, groaning out Bucky’s name, his thighs shaking under Bucky’s hands.

 

Bucky dedicated himself to making up for any lack of depth with sheer enthusiasm and half-forgotten technique. Within a gratifyingly short amount of time, Steve was swearing, his hips thrusting up fractionally into Bucky’s mouth, flexing fingers tugging at his hair.

 

“I’m--fuck, I’m close,” Steve choked out.

 

Bucky hummed happily, redoubling his efforts. Steve’s hand tightened around Bucky’s hair, almost painful, but also really gratifying.  He seemed to realize what he was doing, because the grip eased and one of his hands moved from Bucky’s hair to drape over his eyes.  Bucky looked up the line of Steve’s body, enjoying the sight in front of him so much that he wasn’t sure whether to reach for his own cock or use the hand not holding Steve down to reach up and pinch one of his hardened nipples.  Steve’s chest was flushed pink, and it was so captivating that Bucky slowed down, distracted.

 

Steve hummed at him, questioning.  “You can touch yourself if you want.”

 

Bucky half-sat up, his mouth pulling away from Steve’s cock for a moment.  His chin was wet with saliva, and it felt chilled against the air.  If the way Steve’s body tensed, almost arching towards Bucky, he felt the same thing on his dick.  

 

“Here,” Bucky said, taking Steve’s hand from his head and pressing it against Steve's stomach.  Guiding, Bucky dragged it up to Steve’s chest, pressing Steve’s index finger against his nipple.  “Play with them,” he commanded, voice rough.

 

“Gonna watch?” Steve slurred, and despite the taunt he wasn’t taking his eyes off Bucky as Bucky went back down on him.  It was heady, trying to move his mouth coherently as Steve pinched himself and played with his pebbled nipples. He was making sweet, soft sounds, lost in it. It wasn’t long before Steve came, filling his mouth until he swallowed, half choking.

 

Steve snorted in mirth as Bucky knelt on the bed, his knees still keeping Steve’s legs spread, and finally paid attention to his own erection.  “What?” Bucky asked, not taking it personally.  Steve rode the endorphin of an orgasm high cheerfully.  It was endearing, and Bucky would think about that later when he wasn’t considering whether or not to come where Steve’s hands still rested on his chest.

 

Steve was already fresh from a shower.  He’d probably kick Bucky out of bed if he made him take another one.  “Come’re,” he said, curling up so he could tug at Bucky’s arm.  Bucky couldn’t take his eyes off the sight of Steve’s abs.

 

“What do you want?”

 

“Well,” Steve said, smiling and a little cagey.  “If you move up here, you can fuck my mouth.”

 

“I can…” Bucky repeated, and his brain seemed to go offline for a moment.  Luckily, while Bucky was experiencing total static while trying to function, his body moved so he was crawling over Steve’s legs and lower torso, settling his weight somewhere around his chest.  Steve’s fingers settled over the curve of Bucky’s ass, steadying.

 

“That’s good,” he was saying.  “It’s ok.  Just ease forward a little bit.  You’re sitting wrong for what I pictured, but that’s ok, it just means you have to come to me.  Come on, feed me your dick.”

 

Steve was going to kill him, absolutely.  And unlike his other victims, it was going to be through the power of his mouth.  And dick.  His general being.  

 

 

x.x.x.

 

“I’m hungry,” Steve said, kissing Bucky hard and maneuvering him back against the counter.  There was a dirty frying pan on top of the stove with a few wayward strips of peppers in it.  The room smelled of seared meat and stir fry, but it looked like Steve had eaten it all.  It was a really odd breakfast for Steve to eat, but, like, a _wake and steak_ was a thing in some places.  Bucky had heard from a friend who consumed actual breakfast instead of the coffee and a slice of toast Bucky preferred first thing.

 

“Me too,” Bucky grumbled, put out.  The kissing was nice but the scent of food was reminding him that he couldn’t live off coffee forever. Probably.  In response Steve nipped at his lip with sharp teeth, grinning at Bucky with an even sharper smile when he protested at the taste of blood.

 

“Still hungry?” Steve asked, ducking his head down to scrape at Bucky’s neck.

 

“Yes,” Bucky told him, gasping as Steve actually bit at his neck deep enough to bruise.  It hurt and felt so good that Bucky sagged against the counter.  "Oh my god."

 

Steve hummed with his mouth still full of Bucky's skin.  Then he pulled away, his eyes dark with lust as he licked his lips.  He considered Bucky for a moment before turning abruptly and leaving.

 

x.x.x.

 

The cut marks had jagged edges from someone with more brute strength than skill, and a knife not sharp enough to cut through layers of tissue, muscle, and bone.  The rib cage had been bent upwards like a gaping maw, bones standing out in stark relief against the blood and viscera.  Whoever did this knew what they were looking for and the approximate location of it, but lacked the real-life knowledge of how to do it.  Bucky figured the wide gaping hole had been made by someone looking for the liver, and it was very amateurish. It had taken a few tries for them to find the organ, the cuts non-uniform and unskilled.  Even then it was only half removed by probing fingers.

 

It was a mess.

 

“What the fuck,” Bucky whispered.  He’d never actually had a case with… whatever that was.  Some kind of weird ritual?  He’d seen organ harvesters before, but usually the surgical precision of those was a lot closer to being professional. 

 

Some wackjob was eating livers now?

 

Brooklyn, right?

 

Bucky was distracted from making more observations by Steve sneaking into the morgue behind him.  Their eyes met before Steve walked into Bucky’s office and shut the door.

 

What the fuck?  Steve had been taking more risks, including showing up at Bucky’s work, but he never closed himself in the office like that.  Usually it was more hovering in the hallway and looking at Bucky like he planned to take him apart later, while holding a coffee he knew Bucky couldn’t resist, even if he was currently drinking one.

 

Bucky sighed and left the body on the table, walking over to his office and slipping in behind Steve.  He took in the way Steve was barely sitting in his office chair, looking rough, and barely reacting to Bucky opening the door.

 

Fuck.

 

“Buck,” Steve said in a quiet tone, looking up at him with wide eyes.  His fingernails were crusted with dried blood, fresh enough that it hadn’t flaked off.  There was a smear at his mouth, and his eyes had a glassy appearance to them.  He was staring up at Bucky but Bucky wasn’t sure Steve actually saw him.

 

Wow.  Bucky took all that in.  Apparently _his wackjob_ was eating livers now.

 

“What’s happening?” Steve questioned in a slurred voice.  “I don’t feel right.”  He licked his lips and looked at Bucky, reminding Bucky of the predator he’d begun to notice shortly after Steve’s first treatment.  It was the same look Steve had given him that morning, and Bucky felt fear shiver down his spine.

 

God dammit.  That wasn't normal, even for Steve.  And it seemed familiar to him.

 

He’d checked Steve less than a week ago with his stethoscope, but he’d been listening for his artificial heart, making sure it was working, not checking the system as a whole.  It was negligent at best.  He took in what he knew about Steve’s recent activities, considered how he died, and then why he’d be digging a liver out with his fingers, and came to a conclusion.  “I think you’re low on blood,” he said.  "Or iron."

 

Steve wasn’t listening, he seemed to be completely listless, slouched against Bucky’s office chair in a way that looked like if Bucky moved it incrementally he might slide to the floor.

 

Bucky had stolen worse for Steve than another bag of blood.

 

x.x.x.

 

Steve blinked awake.  He was sitting on Bucky’s office chair with an IV in his arm, the last of the bloodbag flowing into him.  

 

He smacked his mouth, tasting something on his tongue that made him wince and gag.  Wordlessly, Bucky handed over his coffee, not surprised that Steve’s mouth tasted disgusting.  Steve's mouth looked like it tasted disgusting.

 

“What?” he questioned in a careful, frightened tone, taking in Bucky’s office.  Once he recognised where he was he seemed even more confused, but his eyes focused on Bucky with trust and relief.  “How did I get here?”

 

“You came to me,” Bucky explained.  He’d think about it later, how Steve needed help and immediately came to Bucky.  “You lost more blood than your body could handle yesterday.  Your body compensated by craving iron.  I should have checked you last night when you told me the cut barely bled instead of..."

 

“Compensated by craving...?” he started to ask and then winced, bringing his hand up to cover his eyes.  “Oh no.”

 

“It’s normal.  Not just for you.  Anemic people crave liver, too.”

 

“But they don’t…” Steve was breathing heavily, going into a slight panic.  “He wasn’t anyone.  I  _ killed someone _ ,” he told Bucky, looking up at him with a raw expression.   "That was my line."

 

“Yes,” Bucky told him, digging through his bottom drawer for a mint.  Steve gave him a sardonic expression when Bucky tried to give it to him, like he didn't think the mint would help solve anything, but he still took it.

 

“I can’t do this anymore,” Steve said, looking down at his fingers.  He looked like he was going to throw up. Bucky reached for his garbage can and put it in front of Steve’s face. Bucky very firmly didn’t use his office garbage for any of the biohazardous-type waste he handled daily, so the grossest thing that had ever been in there was probably the bagel he’d forgotten in a drawer for a month.  Steve still looked at it like Bucky had offered him something disgusting.

 

“Ok,” Bucky said, more at Steve’s reaction to the garbage than what he said.  He shoved it back, then sat on the edge of his desk.  “What do you need?  Purell and wipes?”

 

“I’m done,” Steve said.

 

Bucky felt the terror go right through his body, settling as a heavy weight over his heart, ready to crush it.  “With us?”

 

Steve looked up sharply, meeting his eyes.  “No.  With killing.  It’s not making the world a better place.  Am I that deluded that I thought it was the answer?”

 

Bucky was silent for a moment, thinking.  “No, not deluded.  Not wrong, either.  But it was a temporary fix, especially for someone like you.”

 

Steve didn't even ask what that meant.  “It made me feel like I was being helpful again.”  Steve took the hand sanitizer from Bucky’s desk and started rubbing it against his stained cuticles.  “And now I have all this blood on my hands.”

 

“It washes off,” Bucky told him.  “I’m talking metaphorical and literal.  Eventually.”


	13. Chapter 13

 Steve had promised him that he was done with it, and Bucky had considered him to be genuine.  He stared down at the body and wasn’t sure what to think.  He wanted to assume Steve’s innocence, but it was hard when the scene looked so similar to the one where he’d cracked a man’s head open on the sidewalk.

 

There was a lot of blood, some brain matter, and Bucky took out his phone in annoyance.

 

**Bucky:** I thought you said you were done

 

**Steve:** I am

 

**Bucky:** I’m staring at a body that says otherwise.

 

**Steve:** WHERE?

 

Bucky rolled his eyes and sent the address, but there was a niggle of doubt in the back of his mind because Steve, for his faults, was honest.  Steve was the kind of guy who, even when a little feral and feeling the dietary restriction that a rib cage presented, walked away from Bucky.

 

“Done texting your boyfriend?” Wilson asked, snide but also clapping Bucky’s shoulder as he walked by him.  Sometimes, Sam made it real hard to keep a secret because Bucky would love nothing more than to shout I'VE BEEN BONING STEVE. I KNOW YOU WANT US TOGETHER.

 

“Another one of your open cases?” He nodded at the body. 

 

“No,” Wilson admitted.  “Because of the similarities to the other one.”

 

“Yeah,” Bucky vocalized, putting on a pair of latex gloves and crouching at the scene.  “I noticed.”

 

Bucky squinted down at the body, taking in inconsistencies.  There was something sticky over the man’s mouth and the splatter pattern was off if he was approaching the two murders through the same lens.  He ended up looking at the body for a while before moving in to take a sample of the syrupy goo over the victim’s mouth.

 

He heard Wilson identify himself as police off to his side just as he finished putting the swab in a bag, reaching for another bag to tie over the head in order to keep everything contained.  He had a weird feeling about the brutality of the scene.  Steve was always efficient in his killing.  He never took any more or any less time drawing it out for revenge or to send a message.

 

He was economical about it.  Even when he's dismembered people, he didn't make them suffer needlessly. 

 

But this scene? It lacked all those markers. It was clear that whoever had killed this man had taken pleasure in it and drawn it out.  

 

Steve wouldn’t.  Steve, at his core, still wanted the world to be a better place.

 

“There’s something off about this,” Bucky told Wilson.

 

“No shit,” Wilson answered him in a tight, stressed tone, making Bucky pause his actions to look up at him.  He had his hands in the air at head-level and Bucky barely had time for his eyes to focus on it, let alone understand it, when someone other than Wilson spoke.

 

“Move away from the body.  Slowly.”

 

It was laughable, really, that Bucky’s first reaction was to think that it definitely wasn’t Steve.  “I’m the medical examiner working out of the 86th precinct,” he said to buy a second as his eyes cast to his kit.  Considering the fact his jacket had the lettering  _ BPD Office of Medical Examiner _ on it in big white letters, he figured identifying himself was stupid at best, but if he could just get to his scalpel he could…

 

What? Throw it?

 

“I said move away from the body!” The voice yelled at him, and Bucky flinched, turning towards the stranger instead.  He wasn’t sure why his instinctual reaction was to move facing the danger, but it was definitely the wrong move when he hear a click mid-motion.  Bucky threw his hands up to protect his head.  The bullet hitting his forearm felt like the equivalent of a moving vehicle slamming into him, and the force of it made him punch himself in the nose.  He felt it ricochet into the brick above his head as he fell backwards on his ass.

 

He was sitting in brain matter with a nosebleed.  Bucky was now the crime scene in more ways than one.

 

He didn't even have any tampons on him to staunch it.

 

“What the..” The shooter was disarmed for a moment by Bucky sitting there staring at him, blood dripping off his chin, and Sam used it as an opportunity to move for his weapon.

 

The guy turned in a panic and shot, and Wilson made a sound next to him before stumbling backwards against the brick wall. He slipped down it slightly, his legs not holding, as his hands still reached for his gun.  It fumbled out of the holster and landed on the ground in front of him, and then Sam just crumbled in front of Bucky’s eyes.

 

Fuck.  What the fuck?  Where were the uniforms who were supposed to be guarding the crime scene?

 

He was going to die in this alley that smelled like onions and rotting cabbage, cowering with his ass covered in miscellaneous goo and a not-dead boyfriend at home that he should have prepared more for the possibility of Bucky not being around.

 

He knew he was going to do the right thing and move towards Sam, even if it got him shot.  He’d made a friend, without the connection of attraction or even like. 

 

And his friend was dying.

 

Bucky moved, scrambling across the pavement until he reached Sam.  Sam was half-conscious, blinking at him as his wet, slippery fingers tried to staunch his own blood flow.  Bucky batted his hand away and did it himself as he heard a footstep behind him, the rustle of clothes, and the click of metal against metal.  

 

“Steve,” Sam breathed, and looked terrified.

 

Bucky looked over his shoulder to find Steve ripping the gun out of the man’s hands.  He looked like an avenging spirit in the poor light, and Bucky could see why Sam looked like he’d seen death.

 

“Your wound isn’t that bad,” Bucky told him, stripping off his jacket to help pack the bullet hole.  “You’re not on death’s door.”  He might be if Bucky didn’t figure out how to staunch the blood. Fucking polyester jackets were useless for it, Bucky realized, pressing his hands down hard. 

 

Steve shot the man, and Bucky didn’t bother taking the time to watch it happen. He was sure Steve looked like vengeance, especially since Sam thought he was dead. Bucky had more on his hands than watching Steve be dramatic.

 

When it was silent, he looked behind him to find Steve hovering uselessly, looking terrified as he took in Sam.  He’d done what he considered to be the easy part, and Bucky knew that if he wasn’t there, that Steve would have taken charge of this, too.  It was an amazing show of faith that Steve saw the scene and felt it was more important to make ‘oh no, you know!’ eyes at his BFF than it was to consider that Bucky might need help.

 

“Give me your hoodie and take my jacket,” Bucky told him, looking behind him to meet Steve’s stricken eyes.  He followed Bucky’s instructions, handing him the cotton.  “That’s much better,” Bucky said to Sam.  “Don’t worry, it’s bleeding a lot but I don’t think it’s hit anything vital.  You’ll be chasing down bad guys in no time.”

 

Steve let out a sigh of relief as he zipped up the jacket.  There was a lot of blood, but that was almost normal for Steve these days.

 

Wilson was still staring at Steve.  “Steve?” he questioned.

 

“Yeah, Sam,” Steve said, “it’s me.”

 

That was the type of statement it was better for Steve to become a fully-realized vigilante by making it and then walking away.  It was very Batman. 

 

Instead he stood there shuffling his feet and looking pathetically earnest.

 

“Call for help,” Bucky prompted in his best unimpressed tone.  

 

“Oh, I didn’t…” Steve gestured helplessly towards his pockets.  

 

“Come here and put pressure on this wound, then,” Bucky said.  “So I can call 911 and the two of you can chat.”

 

Steve dropped down, his hand against Bucky’s shoulder for a moment before he placed his hands over Bucky’s bloody ones.  “Like this?” he asked.

 

“Yeah. I’m going to remove my hands quickly and then you press down.”

 

“You two know each other,” Sam observed as Bucky drew his phone out of his pocket.

 

Shit.

 

Shit.

 

It would be so much easier if he just let Sam die.  He’d bleed out in this dank alley, his wound no worse than Steve’s had been.  Bucky would then have the luxury of time to decide whether he’d bring him back.  It might only be a few hours, but a few hours was better than a few seconds.

 

He dialed 911.

 

“You were there when I met Bucky,” Steve said, looking worried about Sam.  Not about him arresting both of them, but for his life.  It wasn’t for the wrong reasons, exactly, but it was a thing Bucky was very aware of as he spoke to the 911 operator.  

 

“He isn’t surprised to see you.”

 

“No.”  Steve was unerringly honest.  “He brought me back, and if he has to he’ll bring you back too.  But he won’t have to, because you’ll be fine.”

 

He looked to Bucky for reassurance.

 

Bucky nodded, helpless to do anything but promise Steve Rogers the world.  And, in truth, he’d do it for himself too.  He liked Wilson, and Bucky didn’t like many people.  If Sam died that would leave almost everyone he liked dead.

 

x.x.x.

 

“It was a trap,” Steve told him.  He looked miserable, sitting on the edge of the bed with Bucky’s ugly windbreaker still on.  There was blood under his fingernails again.  “Revenge.  For the gang killing.”

 

Bucky was torn between comforting him and getting the fuck out of town.

 

“It’s my fault,” he said in a matter of fact tone, meeting Bucky's eyes.  “I was so blinded. I thought I was making the right choice, but I made everything so much worse.  Sam’s in surgery because of me.”

 

“And you were worried he was in danger then,” Bucky pointed out, dragging his suitcase out from beneath his bed.  He’d packed it a long time as an emergency get-away bag.  Bucky had always been prepared for this eventuality.  He knelt once it was out and braced his elbows on Steve’s knees, taking his hands in his and pressing them against his mouth.

 

Steve didn’t look comforted, if anything he looked worse.  “It’s not that simple.”

 

“People are complicated and we’re selfish assholes, that doesn’t mean that doing something for partially the right reason and partially selfish reasons makes you completely in the wrong.”

 

“That’s exactly what it means,” Steve grumbled beneath his breath, but it made the corners of his mouth ease a little.

 

“We’ve established that I wasn’t completely altruistic when I brought you back to life,” Bucky reminded him, using Steve’s knee for leverage so he could get to his feet.  “If you could move past that, you can get past this.”

 

It really wasn’t that simple, but it was the only thing he had right now.  He was in a panicked fight or flight mode and comforting Steve was taking everything he had to stop from screaming at him.

 

“We have to leave town. Now.  Before he wakes up.” Bucky threw his favorite shirt into his suitcase, turning to stare at his closet to see if there was anything else he wanted to bring with him.  “Go somewhere without extradition.  We’ll join Barnes Senior in Cape Verde or something.”

 

Steve looked confused, and wow was he really not in the same place Bucky was with his panic.  “I thought your dad was in a shallow grave somewhere, remember?”

 

“Yeah, well no one knows that!” Bucky sniped back.  “Fuck. Shit.” He ran his hands through his hair and tried not to panic.  “I know Wilson.  I’ve met Wilson.  He likes me fine, but he’s not going to look the other way about this.”

 

“It’ll be fine,” Steve promised him, standing and crossing towards Bucky.  He looked a lot calmer now, and Bucky realized that not only was Steve not in the same place Bucky was with his panic, he wasn’t even concerned.

 

“Fine?” Bucky echoed.  “I stole your body.  I performed illegal surgery.  And that’s the least of it, what about everything you did?  You killed almost 20 people.”

 

“They deserved it, even if there ended up being consequences.”

 

Fucking Christ.  Why did he love this asshole?

 

“I don’t think the justice system works that way and you know it.  I don’t have a plan for this.  I don’t have a plan for you.”

 

“Bucky,” Steve said, his hands circling Bucky’s biceps with a tight grip, but not one meant to incapacitate.  He was just forcing Bucky to stand still for a moment. “It’ll be ok.”

 

“It’s not…” Bucky said, biting his lip and allowing Steve to pull him into a hug.  He seemed to radiate calmness, and it helped still Bucky into taking a deep breath.

 

“This wasn’t going to last forever,” Steve said in a low voice, almost a whisper, into his ear.  “The first person I killed, I knew it would end like this.”

 

“Like what?” Bucky asked, that same awareness tingling in the back of his neck, the same one that told him that Steve was the killer, that he was more dangerous than anyone knew.

 

“Either going down fighting or leaving Brooklyn.  I’m a dead man,” Steve said with a shrug, like those words were an easily accepted reality.  “I chose to take my borrowed time and right wrongs in the world…” his hands were gentle against Bucky’s face as his thumb stroked across his lips. “But now there’s you, and you aren’t what I expected.  So we’ll leave Brooklyn.”

 

“Steve.”  Bucky didn’t know what to say.  “You’re so alive.”

 

“Yeah, I am,” Steve answered, a whisper against Bucky’s lips, kissing him.

 

“You love Brooklyn,” Bucky reminded him, pulling away.

 

“It’s the only home I’ve ever known, but if I stay here, I’m a ghost story.  Somewhere else I’ll be able to start fresh, live my life.  I want you to come with me.”

 

“Steve.”  Bucky didn’t know what to think.  He’d spent most of his life expecting to get caught, and now that he was, all he was worried about was Steve.  It turned out both of their weaknesses were love and loyalty.  It was a strength, too.  “Are you sure?”

 

“This isn’t your home, either.  God, Buck, don’t you see?  You’re living out someone else’s ghost story.  You don’t owe this mausoleum your loyalty or your life.  You deserve so much more.  It’s not about Sam and it’s not about getting caught.  It’s about you and this house.  It’s draining the life out of you, and you deserve the chance to start over again.”

 

Bucky didn’t even know what the shape of that would look like.  He’d thought of running, but not as a destination or as a way to let go.  It was always with the idea that the past would be on his heels.

 

“Stop sleeping on top of your family’s mistakes and this fucking graveyard.  None of these deaths are your fault.”  By the time he was done, Steve was gesturing widely to the walls, the space between his eyebrows wrinkled as he stared at Bucky with sincere indignation.  “You’ve dedicated your life to atoning for their mistakes.”

 

“I’m in love with you,” Bucky blurted out.  “I’m not reluctant to leave here.  I just don’t want you to make a mistake by asking me to come with you if you’re not sure you want me there.  So, are you sure?”

 

Steve paused, his mouth open mid-tirade.  He blinked at Bucky in surprise, as though he never considered that as Bucky’s hold-up.  “You love me?” he echoed.

 

“How can I not?  I created you.  I breathed life into you, and then you turned out to be this contrary, justice-serving, sarcastic, angry piece of shit.  Of course I’m in love with you.”

 

Steve made a face at him that was a lot like a grimace.  “Are you sure?  That’s not a stellar character review.”

 

“Buddy, I have news for you,” Bucky said.  “I’m not a stellar character.”

 

x.x.x.

 

Bucky paused in the doorway of Sam's hospital room, taking the man in.  He was hooked up to an IV, and he looked a little pale, but he was also sharp enough to notice Bucky immediately.

 

“Has Steve been to see you yet?” Bucky asked, already knowing the answer. Steve’s guilt probably meant he’d been here for atonement first thing in the morning, and Steve’s bad mood was probably because Wilson was equally as much of a justice-serving stubborn dickbag as Steve was. Wilson had a room set up for 4 people, but besides someone sleeping in the bed across from him, it was currently empty.  The blinds were drawn, making it look later in the day than it was.  

 

He looked bored and not happy to see Bucky.

 

Sam glared at him.  “He’s been by.”

 

Bucky nodded to himself.  Called it.  “You’re important to him.”

 

“Not important enough,” Wilson snorted.  

 

Bucky sat in the chair next to Wilson’s bed, even though Sam was making a displeased sound at it.  He’d been waylaid enough times by the detective to not give a shit what he wanted.  “He cares a lot about you and he didn’t ask for any of this.”

 

“He made choices.”

 

“Yes,” Bucky said, sitting back and staring at Wilson.  Once it was obvious Sam wasn’t going to continue, Bucky prompted “is that it?”

 

“They were bad ones.”

 

Understatement, really.

 

“He asked my forgiveness for his part in getting me shot.”

 

“Yeah,” Bucky agreed, because he’d called that too.

 

“That’s not the problem.  The problem is I have all these murders in open case files, and I know who did them.  Loyalty only goes so far."

 

“You’re not the lead on any of them,” Bucky pointed out.

 

“It doesn’t work that way.”

 

It was such an echo of what Bucky said to Steve that it was almost funny.  “No one is asking you to look the other way.  It’s a fucking mess.  Just wait until you’re out of the hospital before starting to investigate, and the next time Steve comes by I suggest talking to him like you have a sudden and temporary miracle granting you the ability to talk with your best friend again.  Are you on any good drugs?  Blame that.”

 

“You’re leaving,” Wilson said, resigned.

 

“I’m not confirming or denying.  Just take the gift.  We’ll have another one waiting for you once you get out of the hospital.”

 

“You’re a fucking asshole,” Sam told him, trying to turn on his side and wincing as it put pressure on his wound.  “I’m angry at you too.”

 

“The difference between me and Steve is I’m not too broken up by it.”

 

“Huh,” Sam voice, like that had revealed something to him.  “So I was right, then?  The two of you are perfect for each other.”

 

And suddenly, Bucky knew that Steve was right.  It was going to be ok.  Maybe loyalty did go that far, or maybe Sam could do his job and still be able to joke about it.  Talking to him had certainly been easier than calling Becca had been.   “You have no idea how many times I wanted to tell you that I've seen Steve's dick," Bucky said with a sharp smile, settling into the chair.  "I can tell you about it if you want."

 

"I thought you were my friend."

 

"Boo hoo," Bucky whined. "All your friends are murderers and assholes.  You should probably consider transferring into homicide."

 

"I'm not sure I see the correlation."

 

"Oh, I was giving you career advice," Bucky informed him, hearing Steve walk up behind him.  Or, rather, he heard a whisper of boot scraping against linoleum and nothing more.  Bucky looked over to find Steve watching both of them.  "I said someday it would be a gift," Bucky told him, getting to his feet.  "Bye Sam."

 

x.x.x.

 

“If I do this, a lot of bodies will be exposed,” Bucky said out loud.  The evening was crisp, the first feeling of autumn in the air.  He was wearing his leather jacket, though where they were going it wouldn’t matter if he still had it.  Steve’s fingers kept brushing against it like he liked it, so Bucky figured there was no harm in keeping it.

 

The scent of gasoline was heavy in the air, making it difficult to breathe.  Once he lit a flame and threw it into the basement, the smoke would make it more difficult.  “Are you sure this is safe?” he asked, turning to look at Steve.

 

“Your house is far enough away from the surrounding buildings that the fire should be contained.”

 

“So not certain,” Bucky acknowledged.

 

“No.  But there isn’t much in your lab that’s flammable.  I left your family journals on Sam’s doorstep.  Your confession is on top of the box, so he’ll know what happened to your father.  Making this an active crime scene will tie a red bow on the present.”  Steve reached out, his fingers closing around Bucky’s hand.  “You don’t have to take this last step, but it’ll help.  It’s more than symbolic.  It’s completely cutting ties.”

 

“I know.”

 

Steve looked thoughtful.  “You forged me out of clay and breathed life into me.  You deserve to put an end to your own suffering.  Take the fire and let it burn them.”

 

“What?” Bucky questioned, Steve putting a pause to all his fretting and concerns with whatever fucking nonsense drama that was.  “What are you talking about?”

 

“Did you ever read Frankenstein?”

 

“No,” Bucky answered incredulously.  “That’s hitting a little close to home, don’t you think?  If I read a book about some doctor bringing someone back to life I may as well spend the time jerking myself off, and that’s so much more fun.”

 

“Well… ok. You at least know the story. Are you familiar with the subtitle?  I’m being symbolic.”

 

“... Ok?”

 

“About Prometheus.”

 

“What the fuck does Prometheus have to do with Frankenstein?  I thought the world on your shoulders bit was an Ayn Rand special.”

 

“That’s Atlas.”

 

Bucky shrugged.  

 

“Are you doing this on purpose?” Steve asked with a suspicious tone.

 

“I have no idea what we’re talking about, so no,” Bucky answered him. 

 

“I’m making you read it on the plane.”  Steve brushed his shoulder against Bucky’s and he was smiling.

 

The last thing Bucky wanted to do while fleeing Brooklyn was read about Doctor Frankenstein.  They had enough worries facing them, like whether Steve’s fake passport would hold up at customs and whether they could make Bucky's half of the Barnes family fortune stretch for the rest of their lives on the run.

 

Steve reached out, his fingers closing around Bucky’s wrist as a lingering sign of support.  He nodded at the open door of the secret lab.

 

Bucky lit the match.

**Author's Note:**

> [TUMBLR MASTERPOST](http://buckmebxrnes-art.tumblr.com/post/161839110119/here-is-mine-and-relenafanels-contribution-to)   
>  [ART POST](http://buckmebxrnes-art.tumblr.com/post/161839035854/heres-my-art-contribution-to-this-years-cap-rbb)
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